From Here On
by fromhereon
Summary: Episode 6: Blackout. Dil continues family tradition by causing a city-wide blackout while Lor and Reggie wrestle with unemployment. Cover by NewEraOutlaw from DeviantArt. Feedback welcomed.
1. Dinner Plans

Phil didn't want to get up, particularly.

A quick glance at the alarm clock confirmed that it was creeping on to six a.m., but not quite there yet. He should have still had four and a half minutes of blissful, lazy sleep to enjoy.

But he was awake now.

The noise that had broken his unconsciousness repeated itself – slightly louder, this time. He groaned at the realisation of what it was, and the fact that the half of the bed next to him was empty.

"Don't drag it," he called out, loudly. "You'll leave big marks on the floor, and I would rather like to get our deposit back on this place."

The noise ceased. "You keep moving it. It's not in line with the couch."

"It's a quantum physics problem," he muttered, "it'll never be in line with the couch." He took a deep breath. "Lift and slide."

"We got our deposit back on the old place, didn't we?" Her voice returned, along with the groaning noise of wood on wood.

Phil sighed, deciding that his sleep-in would have to wait until tomorrow. He kicked off the covers and fumbled with his toes for his slippers. "I think that was luck. If they'd moved the rug we would have been lucky to escape with our deposit and not go into a loss there." He finally gave up on trying to find his slippers with his feet and looked down, seeing them a few inches to the left of where he'd been toeing.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Lor conceded. The groaning noise stopped momentarily.

Phil finally pulled his slippers on with a vague sense of triumph and stumbled from the bedroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He found his wife in the lounge room, observing the coffee table and its alignment with both the couch and the television. "Happy now?"

She shook her head. "I don't quite know what it is, but no matter where I move it, it's never quite in line properly with everything."

"You're getting worryingly pedantic about this," he told her. "I'm going to start watching your sugar intake."

"Well, you can watch me take some in right now," she told him, heading toward the kitchen.

He kicked the coffee table a little to the left – gently, so as not to mark the floor – and followed her. "Just leave me some Frosties."

"Don't I always?"

"No."

"Fair call."

Once in the kitchen, he allowed himself the kind of deeply satisfying stretch that went from the tips of his fingers to the bottom of his toes, until Lor turned around and grabbed his stomach quite alarmingly, causing his entire body to jolt at the shock. "Jesus, Lor."

"Nice to know I can still make you jump," she said, grinning at him broadly as she crossed the kitchen to grab the cereal box, which she peered inside of. "Looks like you might be having toast for breakfast, Phil."

"I thought you said you bought more," he said. "Anyway, it's my turn to finish the box."

"Total rubbish on both counts," she told him. "It was your turn to do the shopping, and therefore your turn to buy the cereal. And don't think I forgot how you stole the last of the Coco Krispies."

The memory came back to him and he sighed. "Oh, yeah."

She rolled her eyes at him. "We'll compromise."

"Compromise?"

"I won't laugh at you when you cut your toast up into soldiers this time, to make up for the fact that I'm about to eat the last of the delicious, sugary, golden, milky, Frosties."

"You're a loving and caring wife," he said, slumping down into his seat at the kitchen table.

He heard her put bread in the toaster before sitting at the table, and didn't look up as he heard the tinkle of the cereal in the bowl. It would just tease him. A moment later he felt her hand run through his hair. "Sorry I woke you."

He looked up at her and smiled. "Really not a problem. I had to get up sooner or later. And this way we're atl least having breakfast together. " He leant across the table and kissed her softly. "Even if you do steal my cereal."

"My cereal," she corrected as he pulled away.

"We'll just see..."

**FROM HERE ON  
****1.1 Dinner Plans**

**starring  
**_**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**_

_**written by Acepilot & Lord Malachite**_

It was an inevitability, Phil reflected. Every time they were just about ready to go, there it was: the phone, ringing it's little heart out.

He contemplated letting the machine get it, but odds were it was his sister, and she's never let him hear the end of it. He tapped an impatient toe, contemplating how long Lor was likely to take in the bathroom before they left and how long he was likely to be on the phone to any given person, and in the end he decided to take the chance, snatching the receiver up from the cradle. "Good morning, DeVille residence."

"You call that place a residence?"

Phil sighed. "It's a start," he told her. "What can I do for you this morning, Angelica?"

"Don't you love fall?" she asked, a certain light-heartedness to her voice that Phil immediately recognised. He felt alarm impulses creeping up his back. "The way the streets all seem to change colour and -"

"What do you want?" Phil cut her off. In the distance to the bathroom he could hear Lor's mobile start ringing and her own mad scramble to locate and answer it.

"I need to know if you two can watch Sean tonight," she asked him.

"Lor here. Kirk? How's it going?"

"Why?" Phil asked Angelica, treading softly through the unit toward the bedroom where Lor was pacing with her phone pressed tight against her ear.

"Well, you know, just heading off to work," his wife was telling her brother.

"Because we have plans tonight," Angelica explained. "Mom and Dad were going to take him but now Dad has to go to some function with some executives and I don't fancy the idea of leaving him on his own with Mom. I think one of them or the other might have a nervous breakdown."

"Seems reasonable," Phil agreed.

"Tonight?" Lor asked.

Phil perked up, reaching out and tapping Lor on the shoulder.

The blonde's attention duly drawn to him, he attempted to mime babysitting. She stared at him in increasing confusion and he fervently wished he had a piece of paper to write on.

"So, will you?"

"Will we be able to babysit Sean?" Phil clarified for Lor's benefit.

It could never be said his wife wasn't a quick study. "Do we want to come to dinner tonight?"

Their eyes met.

"Sorry, Angelica, we've got plans," he told her.

"We'll be there with bells on," Lor confirmed.

"Well who am I meant to get to babysit?" Angelica demanded. "You guys are his godparents, you know!"

"You already used that one last week to get me to pick him up from crèche," he reminded her, "so it hasn't refreshed yet. Try Dil," he suggested.

"I'd rather not," Angelica said. "My son means rather a lot to me."

"You've left him with Dil before."

"And learnt my lesson, thank you."

"Alright Kirk, we'll see you tonight," Lor said before hanging up the phone. She indicated the one he was speaking into, presumably querying if he needed help, but he simply shrugged and shook his head. She returned to rifling through their draws for something.

"Lil, then," he offered. "Alysa?"

"Oh yeah, that'd go over like a treat," Angelica growled.

"You guys get on okay," he pointed out.

"Yeah, but then 'she' would hear about it, and frankly I don't need the kind of stress that would bring about right now."

"Seems fair," he agreed.

"I'll call Lil," she sighed. "I miss the start."

"What's that meant to mean?" Phil asked, watching as Lor wandered out of their room and into the lounge. He trailed after her idly.

"When you have plans and it's all still new and exciting. That first six months..."

"Well, we're now five months in," he reminded her.

"So soon you won't have plans and will be able to babysit any time I need you."

"Goodbye, Angelica."

"Later, DeVille."

He slipped the phone back into its cradle and grabbed his bag. "We late?"

"Not quite," Lor told him. "But we will be in a minute."

"Alright," he said, "let's go." He grabbed the front door and ushered her out in what his mother would have called a chivalrous motion. "So, dinner tonight at Kirk's?"

"Yes," she said.

He pulled the door shut and locked it. "Just us, him and Penny?"

"Apparently," she said.

"Good."

8 - * - * - 8

"I didn't, strictly speaking, lie to you," Lor told him.

Phil, relaxing as best he was able on Penny and Kirk's couch in between dinner and coffee, threw her a brief glare. "Really? How do you figure?"

"Because it wasn't a lie. I gave you all the information I had. It was not part of the briefing I received; therefore I was unable to pass it on to you."

"I would have preferred babysitting, had I known."

Lor took the chance of sitting down next to him, placing a hand on top of his. "I know."

He smiled and turned his hand over, slipping his fingers through hers and squeezing them tightly. "I will get better about this."

"No, you won't," she told him. "But that's okay."

"Here you two are," Penny's voice cut in on them, seemingly surprised to discover them as she came into the lounge. "What are you doing in here?"

"Admiring your lounge set," Lor told her. "It's such a beautiful pattern."

Her sister-in-law gave her a look which suggested extreme doubt on this claim but didn't dispute it.

"Sorry about the unexpected company," she said. "We didn't know he was going to come around."

"Hmm," Phil offered without commitment.

"Ah," a new, male voice came into the conversation. "The party's moved in here, I see."

Phil bit back a groan as his father-in-law joined them in the lounge - Kirk, burdened down with a tray of coffee mugs, following behind.

It wasn't so much that Phil didn't like Daniel MacQuarrie. The man was nice enough after a fashion and generally had his family's best interests at heart. But he had never exactly been shy about his view that Phil was not exactly in Lor's best interest.

"So nice of you to join us for dinner tonight, Daniel," Phil told him, trying his best to be friendly. "I had no idea you were coming."

Daniel pitted him with a level stare. In all the years that Phil and Lor had been dating, and even now married, they had never settled on an agreement regarding what, exactly, Phil was meant to call him. No matter what he said he seemed to get a certain air of disapproval, so he had simply settled on Daniel and decided to tough it out.

"Well, Simone's bridge tournament was tonight and I didn't have anything to do so I thought I'd come out and see my son and his lovely family," he said, wrapping an arm around Kirk's shoulder and giving a tight squeeze. Phil could have sworn he saw Kirk's eyes bulge out ever so slightly. "It's nice having them so nearby, so I can stay so close with my family. And, of course, see my grandchild. Pity she's in bed."

Phil tapped Lor's leg twice. She rolled her eyes but nodded. It had been a masterful hit against their basing themselves in North City instead of Bahia Bay, and the fact that they had, as yet, failed to reproduce.

Which was a conversation for later.

Much later.

"It's a lovely coincidence that you two were over tonight," Daniel told them. "I simply don't get to see you two enough since you moved away."

"An hour down the Coastal," Phil suggested.

"We miss you and Mom as well," Lor quickly slipped in to try and placate things before her husband and her father really did get stuck into things.

"We should see each other more often," Daniel suggested. "In fact, I don't think we've been over to your place since you got married."

"It hasn't changed," Phil assured him.

"Of course it's changed," Daniel said. "You're married now. No more of this...living-in-sin malarkey. I mean, I know that's what happens a lot among young couples like yourselves these days, but I'm happy to see the two of you finally settling down. Behaving like adults."

Phil's foot started tapping uncontrollably, deafeningly loud in the otherwise total silence.

"You and Mom should come over for dinner," Lor blurted out, all-but propelling herself forward in her seat with the suggestion.

Phil's foot stopped tapping, and he spun to face his wife with a look of complete and utter disbelief.

Which, mercifully, his father-in-law remained unaware of. "That'd be nice," Daniel accepted. "How about Friday night?"

"Sure," Lor agreed readily, even as it began to dawn on her the pit she was sinking into.

"Yeah, why not?" Phil asked, an undertone suggesting he could think of a million reasons, but chose not to voice any of them.

Penny and Kirk seemed to be staring at the increasingly tense couple on their couch with a certain car-crash fascination, but were smart enough not to get involved.

"Wonderful," Daniel said, reaching across and clasping Lor on the shoulder. "I'm sure your mother will be thrilled. You know how much she misses you."

"Hmmm," Lor agreed, a slight catch in her throat.

"Anyway," the older man said, standing up from his chair, "I hate to cut this evening short, but I should really be going."

"Oh no," Phil said.

Lor kicked him. "We'll see you Saturday then, I guess," she said, rising from the couch and giving her father a hug.

"I'll show you out, Mr. MacQuarrie," Penny offered, waving him toward the door as he hugged Kirk.

"Thank you, Penny," he said, smiling at the perfect daughter-in-law behaviour his son's wife was offering.

Phil rolled his eyes and muttered, "Kiss-up," under his breath. Lor kicked him again, harder this time as her dad was facing away.

When Penny had led him toward the front door, Phil gave up pretense and leant down, clutching at his shin. "Jesus, Lor, that actually hurt!"

"You deserved it!"

"I deserved it? Who invited him around for dinner?"

"I've got to side with Phil on this one," Kirk piped up. "You two are certainly much braver than I am. I thought the whole point of moving away from Bahia Bay was so you didn't have to see him and mom all the time. I wish I'd thought of it earlier but now every time I mention the possibility he and Mom break out the guilt trip."

"They're not that bad," Lor offered in defence of their parents.

"They are," Kirk said. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Mom and Dad, but they are absolute masters of this kind of thing. Why do you think you and I are the only ones who've gotten married yet? Everyone else knows it's not worth the trouble."

"That, and all those girls were complete wimps," Penny declared, returning to the room. "I mean, come on. If you can't stand the wedding plans conversation after the fourth date, then what are you going to do when they get to baby names by the sixth?"

"They got you too, huh?" Phil asked.

"I'm amazed you held out three years," Penny admitted.

"We're made of sterner stuff than we look like."

8 - * - * - 8

Lor felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to face Reggie, pulling her headphones off. "What's up?"

Reggie leant against the wall of her cubicle. "You up for grabbing some lunch?"

"Don't you ever think about anything but food?" Lor asked, stretching out in her seat a bit, but a quick glance at the clock in the corner of her computer's screen confirmed it was, in fact, 1pm, and she had been typing for nearly four hours.

"Sometimes I think about sports," Reggie told her, "but it's only a fleeting fancy."

Lor rolled her eyes as she rose from her seat, saving the epic work of editing she'd been hard at since arriving. "Lunch it is."

"And sweaty, shirtless, buff hotties." Reggie added as she led Lor away from the desks and towards the elevators."

"Are you, like, trying to spoil my appetite?" Lor asked, reaching back to lock her computer before she was completely in the grasp of her partner-in-crime.

"Perish the thought. Then we'd end up getting back on time. What are you working on today?"

"Turning that interview with Williams into...something." Lor sighed. "He's a nice enough guy but being coach for so long I think he's just started repeating interviews verbatim instead of coming up with anything new." Lor shook her head slowly. "What do we want to do for lunch?"

"There's a new place down on the corner," Reggie suggested as the elevator opened and they shuffled inside. She pressed the button for the ground floor. "Actually, are you and Phil free for dinner tonight?"

"No," Lor said, flatly.

Reggie looked curious at the straight denial. "Got plans?"

"In a manner of speaking," Lor told her. "Do you want to come to ours for dinner?"

All past experience taught Reggie that there was something suspicious about this offer. "Why? What's happening? Murder suicide pact and you need a witness?"

"You're closer than you think," Lor told her. "My parents are coming. Dad is on about how we're meant to start behaving like a grown up couple now. Maybe if I can distract him with other people he won't notice that we're really...not one."

Reggie stopped dead. "Your parents are coming. For dinner. With you and Phil."

"Yes."

The taller girl let out one short, sharp, almost-bark-like laugh. "Oh, this I have to see. I'll be there with bells on."

"Well good," Lor said, satisfied. "I didn't even have to resort to bribery."

8 - * - * - 8

"I'll give you thirty bucks to come to dinner tonight," Phil offered.

Susie laughed loudly, which caused Sean to do the same. This resulted in food spraying everywhere from his mouth, which Susie immediately tended to with a tissue. "You need a better opening gambit, Phil. Bribery should come later. You need tips from your wife."

"She's a soft touch," he said, waving the suggestion off. "Cash is the way to go."

"Well, we can't," she told him. "Why, anyway?"

"Her parents are coming," Phil groaned. He lent down on the counter, hanging his head between his elbows. "After all of Daniel's smarmy comments the other night I really don't know if I can keep up my facade much longer."

"You can manage a facade?" Susie asked in dibelief. "Phil, you are many things. Deceptive is not one of them." She cut up a few more slices of banana and placed them on the saucer in front of her son, which he busily crammed into his mouth.

"Well, it's a game we play," Phil told her. "He pretends to take me seriously as a man, I pretend to take his comments with good grace and understanding. We're not fooling anyone but ourselves, but it seems to keep things civil between us."

"You're a strange soul," she told him, wincing a little and returning to wiping banana off her son's face with a tissue.

"Nothing would have stopped me from marrying her, but there are some bad things you have to take with the good. Anyway, he's coming around and wants to see what we're like now that we're settled down. A real couple. Married and everything."

"I'd like to see that, too," Susie agreed. "However, sadly, I'll have to give it a miss. We've got plans."

"You two always have plans," Phil objected. "Seriously. Fifty bucks? Sean would be a golden distraction."

"No he wouldn't," Susie argued. "He'd get him asking about grandchildren."

"Maybe, but it would still be better than asking why we aren't like 'all the other married couples'."

Susie lifted Sean off the counter and kissed him on the forehead before placing him in his stroller. He opted to continue watching proceedings in silence. "And you think we'd reassure him? We're hardly like all the other married couples, Phil."

"Hey, you're a hot-shot CEO-to-be and a doctor with a kid. You're streets ahead of us."

"Well, what makes you think you're not a settled, regular married couple?"

Phil shrugged. "I dunno. We're just exactly the same as we've always been. I don't know why he suddenly expects we've changed."

"Ask him," Susie suggested.

Phil shot her a look.

"Okay, maybe not," she conceded. "Good luck with dinner tonight."

"Thanks."

"Say bye Sean," she told her son.

"Bye Uncle Phil!" Sean said, waving at him with pudgy little hands.

Phil raised an eyebrow as he waved back. "I rate words now?"

"He never shuts up at home," Susie told him, wheeling the stroller around to the door. "But no-one believes us. He's just shy."

"Enjoy it while it lasts," Phil suggested. "With the two of you as parents it probably won't last too long."

"True," Susie agreed as she pushed through the exit and out onto the street.

Dil Pickles, who had been sitting at the other end of the cafe's bar, raised himself up and strolled over to join Phil nearer the register. "They grow up so fast," he said.

"True, true," Phil sighed. "You want to come to dinner?"

"Do I get fifty bucks?"

Phil rolled his eyes. "You're not a distraction. Well, not a good one, anyway. You get a free meal and probably some entertainment. I just need some reinforcements at this stage."

"Well, who am I to turn down a free meal?"

8 - * - * - 8

Lor pushed open the door with a sigh. Work sucked. It was, she knew, hardly the most original of opinions, but it was one she was sticking to.

Their apartment was surprisingly clean, given the state they had left it in this morning. Phil's records were neatly stacked in their designated shelf instead of strewn across the coffee table, the table was more-or-less in line with the couch - as in line with it as it ever got, anyway - and the floor had been vacuumed. The Temptations were crooning on the stereo.

"You realise," she called out across the unit, "that you put the same record on every time we're expecting company."

"I know," her husband responded from the kitchen. She followed his voice in there and found him cutting capsicums on a chopping board. "It's unobtrusive enough to not endanger conversation but still quality for when there's a lull."

"Seems reasonable," she agreed, leaning on the table and watching Phil as he prepared dinner. "What are we having?"

"We're having pasta," he told her. "Don't ask me what the sauce is called because I forget. But trust me, it's very good."

"I trust you," she assured him. "So, you ready to run the gauntlet?"

"As I'm going to be," he told her, laying down his knife and turning around, crossing the room to her and kissing her. "We'll be fine."

"I know," she said. "I invited Reggie."

Phil smiled. "I thought you might have. I invited Dil."

"Strength in numbers."

"Something like that."

"Good call."

"Thank you."

"There isn't any chilli in the sauce is there?" she asked. "Because my Dad won't eat that."

He smiled deviously. "Really?"

"Forget it," she told him, before pushing him away slightly and turning to depart the kitchen. "I'm going to have a very quick shower and get out of these clothes."

"Your dad probably won't think we're a regular, everyday married couple if you eat dinner naked," Phil told her. "But it's not the worst suggestion I've ever heard."

She rolled her eyes, realising she'd left herself wide open to that one. "Hardi-har-har," she told him. "I'll be back in a few minutes. If Reggie shows up let her in. And don't let her and Dil hit the wine or there'll be none left when Dad gets here."

8 - * - * - 8

The knock at the door cut in on the conversation the four friends had been sharing, and they all simultaneously turned to face the sound in question. Phil gulped noticeably.

"It'll be fine," Dil told them, watching the two of them squirm uncomfortably. "God, you'd swear you were about to have a death sentence passed on you, not host your parents for dinner."

"Regular married couple," Lor muttered.

"Of course," Phil agreed. "Shall we?"

Reggie just grinned as the two of them rose from the table and watched them go. She turned to Dil. "Who do you think will break down first? I like Lor. She's way too nervous."

"I dunno, Philly is pretty on edge. He's not exactly in the most accomodating of moods, I think."

"Fair call," Reggie admitted.

"We can hear you, you know," Lor pointed out.

"Yeah, and we're not saying anything that's going to hit you as news, are we?"

"Fair call," Phil returned.

"Are we going to be left on the doorstep all night, do you think, dear?"

Phil rolled his eyes and yanked open the door, plastering the most painfully fake grin Lor had ever seen on his face.

"Daniel, Simone, so nice to see you," Phil said.

"Mom, Dad," Lor said, stepping forward to embrace her parents. "Glad you came."

"We wouldn't miss it," her mother assured her. "You've been well?"

"Since we spoke on the phone last week?" Lor asked. "Yes, I've been fine."

"Good." She turned to look Phil up and down for a moment. "And you, Phil?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Nice as standing on the doorstep all night sounds -" at this he shot Daniel a glance "- what say we come on in to the lounge. With any luck Dil and Reggie haven't eaten all the nibbles."

"Oh, I didn't know you were having other people over," Daniel said. "We could have rescheduled."

"Oh, you know," Phil said, slipping an arm through Lor's and pulling her closer to himself as he spoke to her father, "since we've been married we just seem to host so many people. You know, like a regular married couple. Everyone wants to come around here for some reason."

Phil continued to grin inanely as Daniel and Simone nodded and walked past them into the living room.

"You're laying it on a bit thick," his wife told him under her breath. "I'd almost rather you went the other way and was just sarcastic to them."

"I'm clinging by a thread."

8 - * - * - 8

"What's that smell, dear?" Simone asked her daughter, nibbling painfully slowly at a cracker she'd taken off the spread Lor had laid down.

Lor knew there were probably a million answers to that one, but she knew her parents well enough to know what was meant.

"It's paint," she told her mother. "Phil was painting this afternoon. He must have left the door of the studio open."

"Oh," Simone said. "He's still doing that, is he?"

Lor clenched her teeth. "Yes, Mom. It's his career."

"_Really_?"

Lor was about to grab Phil in the seat next to her to prevent him from physically throttling her mother, but she belatedly realised he wasn't there. She looked around the room and saw only her parents, Dil and Reggie.

"Excuse me a second, please?" she said, rising from her seat and grabbing the nearest plate. "I'll just see what the situation is with dinner."

She crossed the room and pushed open the kitchen door, revealing her husband. He was not, however, engaged in any kind of activity that would be getting food on the table.

"_What_ are you doing in here?"

Phil looked up as his wife loomed in the doorway. "Cooking."

"That," she said, pointing to the newspaper he was reading on the counter, "is not a recipe book."

"Alright, I'm avoiding your parents," he said. "But I'm man enough to admit it. After denying it at first."

"And that counts for what, exactly, in your head?"

"I'm sure it counts for something. If I had any married, male friends I might be able to tell you what." He sighed. "Come on. As long as you're here you can help me dish up."

They carried plates full of pasta and a bowl of cheese out into the lounge/dining room, interrupting the minutes of completely sterile silence they had left their parents and friends in.

"Dinner is served," Lor announced. "So we can all come and have stifling conversation over here."

"Oh thank god," Reggie muttered as she shot across the room. "I don't know how I let you talk me into this," she said to Lor under her breath.

"You have only yourself to blame," Lor told her.

"This all looks very nice," Daniel said. "What are we having?"

"It's pasta with a vegetable and mustard sauce," Phil said.

"It's very nice," Lor assured them.

"You cooked?" Daniel asked Phil. "How…modern."

Phil made a noise somewhere in the back of his throat that could have been interpreted as a sigh.

"Dad, you know I can't cook," she told him.

The words _regular married couple_ shot through her head.

"You did, once," Reggie pointed out.

Dil shuddered and seemed to slump in his chair a bit, going pale. "We weren't going to discuss that ever again!"

Phil and Lor glared at him, but he just grinned broadly in response.

8 - * - * - 8

Dil leant back in his chair a little, rocking it back and forth. With Daniel outside having a cigarette, Simone in the bathroom and the 'regular married couple' in the kitchen preparing tea and coffee, it left just he and Reggie out in the dining room.

"So, I think it's going very well," he said, catching himself before his chair toppled over backwards.

"You'll break your neck doing that," she said, even as she started doing the same. "You ever wonder why they invited us to this?"

"A bit," Dil admitted. "I think we're meant to be helping."

"Oh," Reggie said. "Well, I didn't get _that_ memo."

The sound of the front door cut off any response Dil might have made, and moments later they were joined by Daniel. "I'm a little surprised to see you both here tonight," Daniel told them without preamble. "I didn't know you were a couple."

"A couple?" Dil asked, as Reggie's chair dropped back to earth with a very loud _thud_.

"Well, yes. I mean, here you are, together. I should have seen it coming, after all - you rarely see one of you without the other. It's nice that Phil and Lor have found some...couple friends. I think that's a good sign for a marriage."

Dil and Reggie exchanged glances. A million thoughts zipped between them, and, for once, they came to a completely silent accord. They turned with unrehearsed but perfect co-ordination to face Daniel again.

"Oh, I see what you mean," Reggie kicked them off. "Yeah, well, 'couple' is a strong word. I mean, we come over here together for the..._parties_, but really, Phil and Lor are the only _couple_ that come."

"I should have known it wasn't the usual Friday night when they said you guys were joining us," Dil said. "I mean, I know that they're pretty - _open_ - but I was just thinking, you know, there are _limits_."

"Definitely," Reggie agreed. "I don't want you going home thinking that it's just a free-for-all," she assured Daniel. "We all behave very responsibly. And within the rules."

"And the instant anyone at all says _perameceum_ -"

"Excuse me," Daniel said, standing up from the table. As Reggie and Dil's recital had gone on and on, he had simply grown paler and paler. "I'll just see if Simone is okay." He walked out of the room as if all his limbs were asleep but he was trying to leave as fast as possible regardless.

The instant he was clear of the room, Reggie and Dil broke down into hysterics, high-fiving each other and practically falling over onto the table in the attempt, which was how Phil and Lor found them.

"You think we want to know?" Phil asked Lor.

"I'm betting not."

8 - * - * - 8

"So, recap," Phil said as he dried a coffee cup. "We defied tradition by the fact that I cooked."

"Correct," Lor agreed, dipping a desert bowl in the sink.

"Your mom thinks the unit smells like paint."

"Yes."

"And that I should be looking to pursue a 'real career'."

"Exactly."

"And Reggie and Dil implied to your father that we host swingers parties."

"Mmm-hmm."

"What one do you think lost us the most points?"

Lor rolled her eyes. "I think us hiding in here doing the dishes while they're still out there digesting desert probably isn't winning us anything."

Phil shrugged. "Well, the dishes have to get done. Otherwise we'd be in a messy house and that's not the behaviour of a regular married couple."

"I'm growing deeply, deeply resentful of those words."

"Regular married couple?"

"Exactly. You know what? We live together, we're happy. We _are_ a regular married couple. No matter what my parents say. Our marriage is not to impress them. It's for us. And who cares if it measures up to what they think it should be or not."

Phil threw his tea-towel in the air and wrapped his arms around his stunned wife. "Oh thank god. I was getting worried that you were taking this all seriously."

"God no," she said, fielding the tea-towel and drying her hands so she could hug him in return. "I don't care if we're like all the other married couples or not. I'm just happy to be married to you."

"That makes two of us," Phil said. "Our marriage is our marriage." He pressed his lips to hers, pulling her off the ground slightly and leaning her against the sink behind her.

She surrendered the the kiss for a second, before something occurred to her and she pulled back sharply. "There's _people_ out there."

Phil shrugged. "Yeah?"

"My _parents_ are out there."

"Well, they'll understand," he said, pressing home for another kiss. "After all, I'm sure they've made out in the kitchen at a dinner party. They're a regular, married couple..."

"And that image in my head just killed the mood," Lor told him.

Phil deflated, slightly. "Bugger."

"And anyway," Lor said, "it probably wouldn't help our reputation as swingers and all..."

8 - * - * - 8

**Well, there it is. Episode 1, done and dusted. We hope you enjoyed it. Coming up next week is episode 2: 22 Minutes Underground. In the meantime, be sure to let us know what you thought. Every bit of feedback helps.**


	2. 22 Minutes Underground

It was, perhaps, a good thing that the sound of the train pulling out of the subway was so loud. It conveniently drowned out the startlingly loud expletives coming from Lor DeVille as she chased after it, leaping down the last few steps of the escalator and rushing down the platform, banging once on a receding train door before watching as it twisted off into the darkness of the tunnel.

She cursed once more, frustrated, loudly, and gleamed some small satisfaction as the syllable reverberated around the underground platform. After listening to it echo off in the distance, as if chasing the train, she turned and started trudging back down the platform to where her husband stood waiting, a vaguely amused look on his face.

"Did you really think that was going to work?" he asked, shrugging off his coat and taking a seat on the bench nearest the escalator. "I mean, sure, the driver _might _have heard you, but – "

"Shut up," she suggested, slumping down next to him. "Like you've never run after a train."

"Well, sure, but never a _subway_ train. I mean, that's just nuts."

She rolled her eyes and looked up and down the tunnel in some kind of misguided hope. At this point she just kind of wanted the night to be over. "When's the next train?"

Phil was watching the relevant information refresh on an overhanging display. "Twenty minutes."

"Fantastic," she muttered. "Just great."

**FROM HERE ON  
****1.2 22 Minutes Underground  
by Acepilot & LordMalachite**

**starring  
**_**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**_

"Are you cold?" Phil asked, leaning back on the bench and closing his eyes. Besides themselves and a busker, just faintly audible on the platform behind them, the platform was completely deserted. Which was to be expected – they'd only just missed the train, after all.

"No," Lor lied through her teeth, trying not to let her teeth chatter too much. "I told you we should have brought the car."

"How was I to know we'd leave before we got really sloshed?" he asked, eyes still closed, head tilted toward the ceiling.

"Because you never relax at these things to have more than two drinks anyway," she pointed out, trying subtly to rub her arms. She would not admit to being cold. It was a principle thing. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being right.

"Well, it's hard to relax around all those…people."

She snorted in amusement. "Oh, I'm so going to pull _that_ one out next time I prop you up after one of those art shows. You get plenty relaxed around crowds at those."

"Not the crowds," he protested, "just..._that_ crowd."

"What? Journalists? Sportspeople?"

"Both," he told her. "I always feel like I'm being judged."

"Phil, no-one at the party was judging you. I doubt anyone even _noticed_ you."

He rolled his head to face her, opening his eyes. "Thanks. That's just what I wanted to hear."

She groaned. "You know what I meant. What, are you just _determined_ to make life difficult tonight?"

"No, you're making life plenty difficult without my help."

"Well, I'm not talking to you if you're going to behave like this," Lor huffed, turning away from him and staring down the tunnel.

"Fine," Phil acquiesced, "about status quo for the evening, anyway."

She turned back. "What's that meant to mean?"

Her husband smirked at her. "Well, it's hardly like you were in any rush to speak to me all night, anyway. You were much too _busy_."

"Well excuse me for having an ambition in my career. This night was really important. Yeah, so I spoke to a few sportspeople – "

"You _flirted_ with a few sports_men_."

She pitted him with a glare she hoped made clear as to exactly what she thought of him. "I can't believe you."

"Oh, come on," he groaned, a knowing look on his face. "That one guy – Jason something-or-other – "

"Jason Carey," she offered the last name. "And I wasn't flirting, I was catching up. He's from Bahia Bay, as you'd know if you listened while I was trying to introduce you."

"He was pretending I didn't exist. It was like your dad's dream come true."

"Don't start in on my dad," she demanded, standing up and all but growling at him. "I'm hungry. I'm going to find a vending machine."

"Uh-huh," was all the indication he gave to having heard her as she trudged away.

She hated nights like this. For a lot of reasons. One, they forced her to wear a skirt, and generally impractical shoes – the comfortable, preferred clothes of her youth had been forced to give way to occasional 'girly' moments for the sake of her career. Secondly, they tended to agitate her husband, which was generally more of an irritant than the skirts and uncomfortable shoes put together.

As much as trudging away was satisfying, she quickly came to the realisation that there really wasn't terribly far for her to go, this being a subway station and all. She rounded the pillars onto the city bound platform, leaning against the wall to take off the torture-devices strapped to her feet. On this side of the dividing wall she found the busker, who was sitting on the empty platform, playing on regardless of the lack of possible donations. Lor would have given him some change just for his blind optimism, but his choice of cover was a truly atrocious rendition of _Billie Jean_ which was doing little to lift her mood. Besides, she realised, she had no change – no pockets in this stupid 'presentable' outfit and her bag –

She didn't have her bag.

Damn.

On this side of the platform there was a vending machine, containing a desperately tempting array of chocolates, of chips, of _bottles of water_. She hadn't eaten much at the party and was extremely hungry and thirsty, and here was her salvation, only she'd _mislaid her bag_ and therefore any money she might have.

She turned to look back at where she'd taken off her shoes, but she hadn't left anything there, which mean she'd either left it at the party, or she'd left it on the seat on the other side of the platform.

Either way, she had to go back and see Phil.

She groaned, the sound echoing impossibly loudly in the empty tunnels, turning to face the segmented wall, beyond which sat her moping husband.

"I am a strong, confident woman," she muttered to herself, "and if he's a dick I'll kick his ass."

She crossed back between the pillars to find Phil sitting in exactly the same spot as before, only now with a strategically folded newspaper in one hand and a pencil in the other. Her bag sat next to him.

"Where did you get a newspaper?" she asked, approaching him slowly.

"It was tucked in behind the seat," he told her, "but it's today's so I'm pretty sure it's safe. Five letter word for 'harmonic set'."

"Chord," she provided. "Do you have any change?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't fit."

"What, are your pockets unusually small or something?"

"No, chord. It doesn't fit. This word ends in 'e'."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Four down is definitely 'hydrogen'. No, I don't have any change."

She groaned. "Maybe I have some."

"Nah, you've just got some notes," he informed her.

"Oh, damn," she muttered," slumping back into the seat, before pausing. "Wait a moment. How did you know that I don't have any change?"

"I was looking in your bag for a pencil," he told her. "I seem to have lost mine somewhere."

She looked at him, aghast. "What? How…why…Phil!"

"What?"

"You don't just go through somebody's bag! Especially not a _girl__'__s_!"

He offered an expression suggesting she'd lost her mind. "It's not like I helped myself to some strange woman's make-up, Lor. You're my wife, I checked in your bag for a pencil."

She groaned and hung her head in her hands. "That doesn't matter – you still don't just rifle through a woman's personal belongings."

"We share an _underwear drawer_," he stressed to her, trying to comprehend the crime he seemed to have committed. "On occasion, we've actually shared underwear. And you're telling me that I can't look in your _handbag_ for a _pencil_?"

"No, you can't," she informed him, snatching up her bag and storming off again.

He watched her go, shaking his head. "I'm getting that I've done something wrong here. But I still can't quite work out what," he muttered to himself, turning back to his paper. "Fugue, maybe."

Lor left him behind, crossing back onto the other side of the platform and fishing a five out of her bag and moving over to the busker, who had coins scattered around his guitar case. He was now slaughtering _Black or White_ with predictable results. She crouched in front of him and snapped her fingers to get his attention. He paused, looking up at her through a fringe that looked ready to take over a small country.

"This is a five," she told him, waving it under his nose. "I need change for the machine. I will leave you the five and take four. I will leave the five and take three if you play _anything _not written by or for Michael Jackson."

He shrugged. "Alright."

Lor made her transaction as the guitarist began picking out something that might have been a cover of Neil Young's _On the Way Home_. She headed back to the vending machine and picked out a bottle of water – mostly to wipe out the taste of the god-awful wine she'd drunk at the party – and a bag of chips. She'd probably get salt all over her nice clothes but she really struggled to care.

She returned to the seat with Phil, who was still struggling with the crossword. "Thanks for getting him to change," he told her, "but I think I liked it better when he was doing terrible covers of songs I hate, rather than murdering a song I really love."

She glared at him. "Look, I'm sorry if you think I was flirting with Jason. I just hadn't seen him in years and I was _trying_ to get an interview with him for the paper. Since he signed with the Raiders he's hot property, and an exclusive could really help my career."

"Wouldn't Simon see that as muscling in on his territory a bit? Him being the 'football' writer, and all?"

"Damn right I'm muscling in on his territory," she confirmed. "That chair should be mine. I'm twice the journalist he is."

"Hence why they assigned you to the better sport," he suggested.

She hit him over the back of the head. "Don't start with that."

"Alright, alright," he said. "No making fun of football tonight."

"Good," she said, tearing open the chips and having a few. She turned to offer them to him when –

"Of course, you know, I admire football players. They're fully grown men who aren't too afraid to admit to being so scared that they can't play _rugby_ without a foot-thick of padding. And shorter distances to run."

She rolled her eyes. "He still could have kicked your ass."

"You'll notice that I don't play _any_ form of rugby, so I'm not making any claims about my own manliness."

"Good thing, too," she told him. "I was going to offer you some chips, but maybe you want to work on your _tone_."

"Hmm," he offered, trying to resist rising to the bait. "Ten-letter word for 'disruption'."

Arguing voices came from the top of the escalator, increasingly loud as they grew closer and closer. A male and a female, short on patience and both a bit inebriated.

"It's _your_ fault," the woman accused. "Who doesn't carry their license in this day and age?"

"I don't _drive_," the man pointed out. "I don't even have a car. Why would I carry my license?"

"But you carry your passport."

"I never know when I might want to leave the country," he argued.

"That, I'll buy."

"Anyway, it's _your_ fault – you said you weren't going to drink tonight, which is why we brought _your_ car instead of borrowing someone else's."

"I wasn't going to! It's not my fault Robert is such a…dick. He's just such a…well, dick."

"You know, someone asked me this evening what attracted me to you. I told them it was your eloquence."

Phil and Lor, far too experienced to be surprised, turned to watch as the escalator spilled a well-dressed but somewhat-dishevelled pairing of Reggie Rocket and Dil Pickles onto the platform.

"Friendship," Phil muttered to himself, filling in little squares with his appropriated pencil.

8 - * - * - 8

"Five letter word for _apple_?" Phil asked.

"Wanky?" Dil suggested. "Pretentious?"

"That won't fit," Phil pointed out.

"It will if you write really small."

"Fruit," Phil decided.

"Well, sure, if you want to be obvious about it," Dil told him.

"How the hell did you get roped into being Reggie's date to this stupid thing, anyway?" Phil asked, stretching out his legs a little. He realised he'd now been sitting very still for quite some time and was beginning to feel the effects of it.

"A distinct lack of other options. She was more just wanting someone who wouldn't spend the night gawking at her. And there's little risk of me doing that."

"True," Phil agreed. "So you two aren't..."

"Aren't what?" Dil asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Aren't...involved?" Phil ventured.

Dil made a face that suggested he'd bitten into a lemon. "Good lord no. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad we're actually starting to be friends instead of friends-of-friends. But I don't think there's any greater complication on the horizon than that."

Phil gave him an appraising look.

"What?" he asked.

"What did happen then, on the night of mine and Lor's wedding?"

"I don't know," Dil said. "It was _your_ honeymoon."

"Hmm," was all Phil chose to say. "Eight letter word, _Beatles_ album."

"I sincerely hope you're not expecting me to help you with this," Dil said.

"You should know it," Phil told him.

"I should wear underwear," Dil said, "but you don't see me following that rule either.'

"Thank you so much for sharing that."

"What are friends for?"

At the other end of the platform, the busker's newfound love of the Bee Gees was growing concenring as he attempted an ambitious cover of _Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You_. Lor leant against one of the pillars while Reggie agonised over what should have been a fairly simple choice.

"Plain or Salt and Vinegar?" she asked Lor.

"I went with plain myself, but it's really your call," she told the older woman. "I mean, he's just so...infuriating sometimes."

"I know."

"He bitches half the night away about being at this stupid party and now that we've left he's sitting there with his crossword and sulking. Not to mention the going through my bag thing."

"You did mention it."

"I know," Lor snapped at her friend. "I just..."

"He doesn't like coming to these kinds of things," Reggie said. "So what? Do any of us, really?"

Lor wanted to say that she loved them, that they were one of the highlights of her job. But that was really a level of stretching the truth that she was simply not comfortable with. "I don't _dislike_ them," Lor said. "I mean, I get that it's hardly the most thrilling way to spend an evening if you're not in our field of work, but..."

"But what?"

She sighed. "Don't worry," she told Reggie. "I'm going for a walk."

"Where?" Reggie asked, looking around at their surroundings.

"Just...somewhere!"

Reggie shook her head as she watched her friend wander away, toward the escalators but staying on the far side of the platform - presumably so she didn't run into her husband. She collected her chips of choice from the vending machine and strolled back around the divider and toward the end of the platform where Phil and Dil were arguing over a crossword answer of some kind.

"You're spelling it wrong," Dil insisted. "It's _ph-_, not _f -_."

"You're phlipping out," Phil suggested.

"Children," Reggie chastised as she approached them.

"Yes, ma'am?" Phil shot to attention.

"Your wife seems to be a bit upset with you," Reggie told him.

Phil nodded. "I had noticed, actually."

"You rifled through her purse?"

"I borrowed a pencil," Phil moaned. "Why is she making such a big deal about this?"

"I don't think that's quite so much the problem," Reggie told him.

"I dunno," Dil said, "even I know that a woman's handbag is sacrosanct. Where did you get the chips?"

Reggie jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Vending machine on the city-bound platform."

"Thank you," Dil said, rising from his perch and disappearing around the columns.

Phil turned to face Reggie. "You'll know this. Two four letter words, _skating apparatus_."

"Half-pipe," she supplied. "What's going on with the two of you?"

"She's a bit unimpressed with how I behaved at the party this evening," he told her.

"I wasn't paying attention," Reggie admitted. "Were you acting like a twat?"

Phil rolled his eyes. "No. Well, not really. I wasn't oohing-and-aahing at all the sportspeople but I didn't think I was being _that_ big a dick."

"Maybe you need to talk to her about this," Reggie suggested.

"We tried that," Phil told her. "It didn't go well."

"Try again," Reggie suggested.

"Why did you bring Dil to this thing?" Phil asked.

Reggie shrugged. "He's generally pretty bearable, all things considered. And he doesn't gawk at me or expect me to act like the subservient little woman."

"I would think not," Phil said, sighing and standing up. "So how did the two of you end up in a screaming match?"

"Eh," Reggie grunted, "I might have brought that on myself."

"How so?"

"I asked him to pretend to be my boyfriend," she told him.

Phil tracked back over that for a second. "Alright, you're going to have to explain that one."

"Well...there was this guy there who was getting a bit...personal. Some football player with the Raiders."

"Carey?" Phil asked.

"Yeah, that's him," Reggie nodded.

"Figures."

"What? Anyway," Reggie said, determined not to be thrown off track at this point, "last time we were at one of these kind of things, he was there and was quite interested in the fact that I was single. So I was kind of determined not to be stuck with him hitting on me again, hence Dil."

"And you didn't tell Dil this was meant to be anything other than 'as friends' until after the fact, huh?"

"Not exactly, no."

Phil laughed. "Oh, I bet Dil took that and ran with it."

"I think he was pretty unimpressed with having it suddenly lumped on him," Reggie admitted, "but he was quite creative under pressure. Did you, for instance, know that we met each other across a crowded room in New Zealand while I was there to cover a sheep racing festival?"

Phil raised an eyebrow. "A what?"

"It went downhill from there."

"A good direction for a sheep race," Phil suggested. "Which way, pray tell, did my wife go?"

"Up the escalator."

"Thank you," he said, pulling himself up off the bench and nodding to her. "I'll be right back."

"I'm sure," she said. "Train is in five minutes, remember?"

"I know, I know."

Phil mounted the escalator and rode it, in all its crawling glory, up the ridiculous heights to the ground floor. Looking back down was enough to make him mildly dizzy, and he attempted to distract himself with the crossword but found it to be a pretty ineffective attempt. He settled for staring at his shoes until he saw them make contact with solid earth.

The concourse level of the station was dead silent and all but abandoned, the ticket counter closed and the automatic ticket machine lit-up to attract people toward it.

"Lor?" he asked the empty room.

There was a sigh. "Yeah?"

He followed the voice and found her sitting by the station gates, looking pretty miserable. "Hi."

"Hi," she said.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "I didn't mean to ruin this evening."

"You didn't," she said. "I mean, you did, but...you didn't."

"Well, thanks for clearing that up for me," he said, dropping down next to her. "What's wrong?"

She sighed. "I don't like fighting with you," she told him.

"I'm not such a big fan of it myself."

"I didn't even enjoy the party myself," she admitted. "I don't know why I should expect you to. I just guess I wish...I wish that when we do get a night out we could _both_ enjoy it."

"We don't seem to date as much as we used to, no," Phil nodded along with her sentiment.

"We used to go out and do things we liked," she reminded him. "Movies, dancing, that kind of stuff. Now, what? I'm always struggling with stories or whatever, you're trying to run two careers at the same time, and...well, I guess we just don't have as much time as we used to. When we do have nights out, we end up doing things like this. Art shows and sports functions that we're professionally obliged to and neither of us really enjoy."

Phil sighed. "I know. I guess I hadn't thought that getting married would end our dating life quite like it has." He reached over and took her hand, running his fingers up and down it. "From now on, we need more time to ourselves. Dates. Nights alone. Less work at home."

"You really think we can pull that off?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, standing up and pulling her to her feet with him. He led them back to the escalators, which they began descending. "Because even if we don't have enough time with each other and going to these little sporting soirees drives me nuts and all that, I really do love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. And that means actually _spending _as much of that time as possible _with_ you."

She took advantage of his being on a lower step and kissed him, for once without having to stand on her toes to do it. "I love you too," she said, slipping down onto the same step as him and holding him tight.

He smiled and returned the embrace.

"So, I see you two fixed things up," Reggie noted as they descended back onto the platform.

"More or less," Lor agreed. "How long until the train?"

"Any minute now," Dil said.

"And how about you two?" Phil asked. "Are you going to play nice now?"

Dil groaned. "Do we have to?"

Phil rolled his eyes. "Come on."

Reggie sighed and got up from the bench, walking over to where Dil leant against the wall, extending her hand to him. "I'm sorry I called you an idiot."

Dil looked at her hand as if afraid it would bite him, before taking it and shaking it with something resembling vigour. "And I'm sorry I said you were selfish in bed."

Reggie's jaw dropped. "You _what_?"

Dil stepped back slightly. "Ah. Must have said that when you were out of earshot."

As tempting as it was to watch her friends descend, yet again, into childish squabbling, Lor felt a tug on her arm and allowed Phil to pull her away, past the dividing wall and back onto the city-bound platform. "What are we doing?"

Phil pressed a kiss to her forehead and pushed his hands down on her shoulders. "Wait here."

"Okay," she said.

She watched as he crossed the platform to the busker, who was finally just sitting in silence, blowing slightly on his fingers as he counted his money. Her husband pulled a crumpled note from his pocket and handed it to the other man, who listened intently to whatever it was that Phil had to say before shrugging, nodding, and setting himself back up.

Phil walked back over to her with a smile on his face as the busker started playing a new song - a choppy sequence of chords in four-four. Phil held a hand out to her, which she accepted with a look of slight bafflement on her face as he pulled her in, flush against his body. "Who says I never take you dancing any more?"

She laughed and allowed him to lead them through a series of moves they hadn't done in far too long but that they would never really forget. Even the busker's singing - for once soft and somewhere in vaguely the right key - wasn't going to throw them, and she tucked her head in against Phil's neck and listened to his breathing until the train pulled into the station.

8 - * - * - 8

**Episode 3: Piano, coming next week. Feeback is always appreciated.**


	3. Piano

_thanks to Acosta, Knoodlehead, and everyone who's been reading - hope you're all enjoying it. We're loving writing it. This episode has two pretty important characters introduced: Arnold and Lil are both definitely here to stay. Hope you think they blend with the rest of the gang. Let us know what you think._

_8 - * - * - 8_

"What do you mean, you can't come into work?"

Lor opened her eyes slowly, before being forced into rapidly blinking. The room was surprisingly bright - she would have to have words with her husband about volume and lighting control at six in the morning.

She rolled over to see him pacing up and down alongside their bed, phone in one hand and one of his slippers in the other, tossing it in the air and catching it again.

"Well how far away are you? Will it just be a couple of hours?"

She sat up in the bed and clutched her knees to her chest, watching him pace and listening to the phone call. It wasn't sounding good for their relaxing day off together.

"What do you mean, _Miami_?"

Definitely not good.

"I _know_ where Miami is, Michael. I'm just trying to work out how on earth you ended up there when you knew you _had to open this morning_!"

Lor sighed and decided to call Tish and see what the other girl was doing today. Apparently she herself was going to be quite free for the afternoon.

**FROM HERE ON  
****1.3 Piano**

**starring  
**_**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**_

_**written by Acepilot & Lord Malachite**_

"I didn't think you were working this morning."

Phil looked up from the banking to see his sister standing before him, backpack slung over one shoulder and bags under her eyes. "It wasn't in the plans, exactly," he said, "but you know how plans are."

"Where's Michael?"

"Miami."

"What's he doing in Miami?" Lil asked.

"He's not entirely sure himself," Phil told her. "He's fired, obviously."

"And not before time. So, who's your new full-timer?"

"Well, so far, no-one," Phil admitted. "Hence, me."

"Well, good luck with that. Can I have a coffee?"

"Can it wait until I've finished the banking?"

"You call that customer service?"

"No, but I don't call you a customer, either."

As Phil slapped down the deposit bag, finally completed, on the bench in front of him, a knock at the front door caught their attention. Both twins looked up to see a delivery man standing there, arms crossed and checking the address on an invoice.

"Oh, thank god," Phil muttered. "I was getting worried I was going to have to serve dregs." He crossed the café floor and pulled the door open. "Morning."

"Java Lava Café?" the man read.

"That's us," Phil confirmed, taking the invoice and a pen from the driver. "You're new. Where's Angelo?"

"Who's Angelo?"

"He's the guy who usually does our deliveries, that's all," Phil said, scribbling his signature on the dotted line. "Must be sick."

The driver raised an eyebrow. "How often do you get these?"

"A few times a week," Phil said, raising his own eyebrow. "Kind of a business necessity."

"If you say so. So is there a loading dock around the back?"

Phil shook his head slowly. "No."

"Oh. This front wall open up then?"

"In the summer, yeah," Phil said, looking at the glass panels he and Chaz had installed a few years back. "Al fresco coffee experience and all that."

"Brilliant. You want to sort that out for me then?"

A sinking feeling began to settle over Phil. "Usually it just comes through the front door."

The driver looked at the doorway doubtfully. "I don't think it will fit."

"How many bags of coffee beans have you brought?"

"Coffee beans?" the driver asked.

Lil peered over her brother's shoulder at the invoice he still held in his increasingly limp hands. After a moment of staring at the driver in disbelief, he looked down at it himself.

"Allan's Music Los Angeles. One Yamaha Baby Grand Piano. Deliver to Java Lava Café, 14 Baylis Street, North City," Lil read aloud. "How drunk _was _Michael last night?"

"This one I don't think I can pin on him," Phil told her. "Check the billing address." He turned back to the delivery driver. "I don't want a piano. Take it back."

"I can't. I'm not even going back to LA today, and you already signed for it. It's all yours."

"What am I going to do with a piano?" Phil asked, waving his arms around expansively. "This is a café, not a jazz club."

"It'd make a nifty conversation piece," the driver suggested. "Now, can we do something about opening up the front here?"

8 - * - * - 8

"I know my license is only for May to August, but come on. It's September, and it's only two days. I promise."

Reggie took a seat opposite Lil. "Is he still on the phone with the council?"

"Has been since they opened their front desk," Lil confirmed. "He was about to start resorting to threats."

"Four hundred dollars for _two days_?"

"Sounds like they're resorting to extortion," Reggie said.

"Always knew our council rates were way too low to be realistic."

"Has he actually gotten onto Dil yet?"

"Not as yet. Left a very carefully worded message on his answering machine though."

"I'll bet he did. How about you?"

Lil shook her head. "I haven't left any messages on Dil's answering machine whatsoever, carefully worded or otherwise."

"Ha ha," Reggie deadpanned. "I more meant how are you going? It seems like I barely see you around here anymore."

Lil shrugged. "Well, since I decided I'll spend the rest of my life going to college, I've really thrown myself into it."

"Not the rest of your life," Reggie said, rolling her eyes. "Just a few more months and you'll be home free. Dr. Lillian DeVille, psychiatrist-at-…law?"

Lil laughed. "It has a ring to it. I dunno, though, sometimes I wonder if this is really what I want to do with the rest of my life, though. I mean, I've been working toward it for so long that I can barely even remember why I'm doing it. Why did I ever want to be a psychiatrist. For that matter, what makes me think I _can _be a psychiatrist?"

"Oh, Lil," Reggie said, shaking her head slowly. "I _wish_ I had the dedication you do. You actually managed to spend the last seven years of your life working toward something. You'll be a great psychiatrist. You don't give up, for a start."

Lil raised an eyebrow. "You want me to psychoanalyse _that_ sentence?"

"I'd rather you didn't. We're talking about _your_ ridiculous career choices."

"Thanks, Reg."

"Thank you!" Phil's voice cut in on them, in a tone that didn't sound thankful in the least. "I'll send someone down with a cheque," he said, before slamming down the phone. "Sometime in November," he growled, before picking up the phone and dialling again. "Dylan," he said, "this is, as you may have noticed, the fourth message I've left you this morning. If you don't - "

"Hey, it arrived!"

Reggie, Lil and Phil all turned to the voice coming from the doorway, where a positively jubilant Dil Pickles stood, admiring his latest purchase: a Yamaha Baby Grand Piano that was currently taking pride-of-place in the Java Lava Café.

Phil put the phone down in its cradle. "Ah, good. You're here. Hate to waste good threats on you over the phone."

Dil held his hands up. "Before you say anything, it was a really good special, it was for one day only, and my flat has to be cleaned out before I can put it in there. It's a three day job, max."

"You haven't cleaned your flat since you moved in to it," Phil pointed out. "And you only have _two _days. And how much did you save on the piano?"

"Four hundred dollars," Dil said, a broad smile on his face.

"What a delightful coincidence."

8 - * - * - 8

"So, six months in, how are you finding it?" Tish asked.

Lor looked up at her from the rack of CDs she was flicking through. "How am I finding what?"

"Marriage, doofus," Tish said, shaking her head. The whole thing with the wedding ring and all that?"

"It's fun," Lor said, smiling. "I think the novelty is starting to wear off, though. We've started scheduling dates and stuff."

"Enjoy that while it lasts," Tish told her.

Lor raised an eyebrow. "Surely you're not telling me that you and Tino aren't going out together any more."

"No, no. We go out. But when you get pregnant - "

"Whoa, whoa. When _I _get pregnant?"

Tish nodded. "Well…yeah."

"I'm not getting pregnant, Tish."

"Well, not right now."

"Not in the near future, either," she said. "Not in the slightly distant future. Not before there is true artificial intelligence."

Tish held up her hands. "Alright, I get it. No pregnancy for you." Tish sighed. "Let's get out of here."

Lor looked down at the CDs in her hands and nodded. "I just want to buy -"

"I'll meet you out the front," Tish told her.

"…Alright," Lor said. "I'll see you out there in a minute."

As she watched Tish stalk off - as much as her six-and-a-half-month-pregnant friend could 'stalk' anywhere - she wondered if she hadn't struck on something of a nerve.

8 - * - * - 8

Phil had barely sat down to take his first chance at a break all morning when he felt something wrap itself around his legs and cling tightly.

"Uncle Phil!"

He raised an eyebrow at that but opened his eyes and looked down to see Sean Pickles clutching at his leg. The three-year-old smiled up at him. He mustered a tired grin in return.

"Hey Sean," he said, reaching down and pulling the toddler up onto his lap. "It's sleep time."

"It's not," the boy objected. "I just got out of playgroup so it's not even _lunch_ yet."

"Silly me," Phil said, trying to keep his eyes from drifting shut again. He wasn't usually this tired, but after a six day week he and Lor had taken advantage of their impending day off the night before and stayed up late for a change. He was, he decided, getting too old.

"You look beat," Susie's voice told him.

He didn't open his eyes this time. "You have no idea."

"Couldn't help but notice the honking great big piano," she said, jerking a thumb over to the part of the café where Phil had left Dil's new instrument.

"Dil's," Phil told her. "I've been left to babysit it for a couple of days."

"Oh. Pity. I thought it was part of your whole redecoration thing," Susie told him, going over to it and pulling up a chair. She tapped out a few chords and runs of notes. "It's nice."

"Good. I'd hate to have a substandard instrument taking up all my space."

"You're grouchy today, Uncle Phil," Sean told him. "At playgroup you wouldn't be allowed to use the blocks."

"Rats," Phil said, tucking Sean under his arm and standing up. "Time for me to get back to work."

"Uh, Phil?"

He turned to face Susie again. "Yeah, Suz?"

"Hate to do this to you, but…don't suppose you'd be able to -"

"Susie, no. I'm swamped. My full-timer is in Miami and my casuals are either in hospital, in class or some combination thereof. I've had to bribe Lil into coming and covering my lunch break."

Susie simply stared at him. He recognised that her eyes were getting wider.

"No, don't you do that."

She placed her fingers on the keys in front of her and began tapping out the introductory notes to _You've Got A Friend_.

"That doesn't work."

Sean regarded his mother oddly before turning back to his godfather. "What's Mommy doing?"

"Cheating," Phil told him. "Alright, alright, I'll watch him."

"Angelica will pick him up after lunch," she told him. "Thank you thank you thank -"

"Yeah, yeah."

8 - * - * - 8

Lor caugfht up to her friend outside the music shop. In the low traffic of the mall, Tish was easy to make out, parked in an aisle table of the foodcourt with a bottle of water and a small salad she had obviously procured in the blonde's absence. Lor approached her friend hesitantly, sitting across from her.

"Man, remember all those weekends we spent at the mall in Bahia Bay? We must have drank an ocean's worth of Chug-A-Freeze's in our day." Lor attempted to break the ice.

Tish set her fork down. "With the amount of things we used to pack into a weekend, we probably would've collapsed without a healthy dose of sugar."

"Yeah, but look at us, we turned out alright."

"Quite." Tish nodded, resuming her eating.

"Pregnancy craving?"

"Not specifically. I just get hungry sometimes. Not everything I eat is just for me anymore. And walking around like this burns through calories fast. But the exercise is good, even if I'll be begging Tino to rub my ankles tonight."

Lor simply nodded. "So, um, what's it like?"

"You mean being pregnant?"

Lor nodded again, not wanting to use the 'p' word. "It's an adventure. Trust me, there are some days that I really don't feel like getting up. And others where I can't get to the bathroom quickly enough. The first trimester was way worse, with the morning sickness and all. But I was also constantly stuffed up, sneezing, achy..."

"I never heard about that other stuff before, just the morning sickness." Pondered Lor.

"It can happen." Tish explained. "It's like your body betrays you. The doctor said my immune system was down. Normally, I'm rather healthy. But during those first few months, my body was saying "Screw you Tish, I'm making a baby." She looked up from her plate and laughed slightly. "At least, I can swear I heard it say that late at night when I was going through hot and cold spells, stuffy and miserable. Once I was so frustrated I kicked Tino in the shin while he was sleeping peacefully beside me. Serves him right!"

"Is it weird?"

"Weird?"

"Well, I mean, you're carrying Tino's child. We spent most of our childhood hanging out with him and Carver, It must seem a little weird to be having his baby. I mean, I only dated him, and it felt weird at first. Not in a bad or wrong way or anything." Lor rapidly waved her hands in front of her. Just, I don't know..."

"It's not weird. I'm in love with him. It took me awhile to really fathom it, but this is what I've wanted with him since...since sometime whe we were in college, I think. Besides, it's not his baby. It's _our_baby. This child is just as much a part of me as it is of him. Twenty-three of my own chromosomes are in there too..."

"I get it." Lor stopped her.

Tish sighed. "You don't. But, one day you will."

Lor rolled her eyes. "Look, Tish, I'm sure that I love Phil just as much as you love Tino. But the whole baby thing...I just don't see it. It's like...something that's way off in the distant future that I can just barely make out. I'm a card carrying member of the birth control club, there's just so much I want to do right now, both for myself and with Phil."

"You didn't discuss having kids with Phil before you got married?"

Lor rubbed her neck sheepishly. "Not...really."

"And you just married him?! What if he wanted to have several children?! That could be a pretty big dilemma!"

"Trust me, Phil does not want an army of rugrats."

"And you know this because...?"

"Because...I just do, okay?"

Tish sighed, finishing her small meal. "Lor, I'm the last person to try to rush you into procreation, honestly. But this is something you really need to talk about with Phil. At length. It's important that you be on the same page for this sort of thing, whatever your decision."

_"_So you and Tino were trying to get pregnant?"

"Not exactly. We're still young enough to have time, and we both agreed there's nothing romantic about making love to a schedule. So we decided to have a normal sexual relations whenever we wanted without the use of any protection, and if we conceived, we conceived. There never really is a 'right time' to have a baby or not, Lor. It's about the parents consenting to that change in their lives." Tish dabbed her mouth with her napkin. "We just let nature take its I suggest you do the same with Phil. You shouldn't be pressured either way."

"I don't feel pressured. I just..." Lor hesitated.

_"_What?"

"There's a lot of other things I want to accomplish in my life right now, and I don't want to do anything that could cost me the chance to do those things, that's all."

Tish opened her bottle of water and downed about a third of it, then replaced the cap. "I see." She answered curtly, bracing her hands against the table to stand up and throw away the trash. "We should go. I promised I would get back to the Java Lava for Tino before rush hour."

Lor raised an eyebrow as she got up from the table, marvelling at her friend's returning mood swings. "Uh...okay. Shall we head down to the car?"

"Yes," Tish responded, not even looking back.

8 - * - * - 8

The theory had been that Phil would take an hour off which Lil would cover him for. Theories, however, are fickle things.

"Why isn't everyone somewhere eating lunch?" Phil growled as he banged the grounds out of the dosing chamber. "This is ridiculous."

"Well have a great day," Lil said, giving the most recent customer her change before turning to her brother. "Are you complaining that you have _too many_customers?"

Phil groaned. "No. Well, yes. But no."

Lil laughed. "I can't believe you. You're always moaning that it's so boring working here -"

"I _like_ it when it's boring working here," he told her.

"I like having other people to talk to," she said. "I hope that when I am finished with university I'll be out in the world more again. Sometimes I think I'm becoming completely anti-social."

Phil paused in his movements as he racked up a long black on the coffee machine. "I didn't realise that you felt that way."

She shrugged. "Come on, Phil. I mean, you must have noticed that I've not been around much."

"Not as much as I'd like to see you," he agreed. "But, well…I just thought you've been busy."

"I've been busy becoming a hermit," she told him. "I mean, I go to school, maybe work a shift at the library - hardly a hotspot of social interaction - and go home. I just…I remember when I used to make time to come see you and Lor or go home and see Mom and Dad or any number of things. Nowadays it just all seems like too much trouble. And of course I haven't been on a date in…longer than I'd like to admit."

"Oh, we can get you a date," Phil said, casting a hand around the Java Lava. "Pick a customer. Any customer."

Lil rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah. That's like saying I'll marry the next guy through the door."

Phil chuckled before sobering somewhat. "I really didn't realise it was this bad for you," he said, adopting a more serious tone.

"It's all of my own making," Lil said, shrugging. "They teach you all about how the mind works when you're learning to do this job but you still don't see things in yourself."

The bell above the door jingled to announce the arrival of yet another patron of the Java Lava, and Phil swore to himself that one of these days he was going to rip the thing off violently. Half the front of the café was open, and people still insisted on walking through the door and ringing that blasted bell.

Phil watched the latest addition to the throng as he crossed the room. He was slightly shorter than average with a mess of blonde hair and a slightly wider-than-usual head, dressed in a suit and carrying a folder which he dropped on the counter. "Good afternoon."

Lil smiled at him broadly, switching moods from melancholy to melodious In a bare second. "Good afternoon. What can we get you?"

"I'll have a macchiato, thanks," the blonde man told her.

"Any sugar in that?"

He looked at her strangely for a moment, before saying, "No, thank you."

"Take a seat, I'll bring it over to you."

"Thanks," he said, strolling slowly over to the piano. "Does this work or is it just decorative?"

"It works," Phil told him.

"I wasn't going to come in here," the customer said, "but I saw the piano and I thought, that looks like an interesting place. I should check it out."

Phil shook his head slowly before returning to making the requested macchiato. The blonde man sat at the piano and began lightly tapping at the keys before picking out a more definite tune.

Lil poured out a glass of water and carried it over to him. "You play?"

"That's a bit generous," he told her. "I have a little bit of a grasp of the basics."

"Doing better than me," she told him, setting the glass down on the table nearest to them and returning to the counter.

Sean Pickles, who had been sitting at the counter, got up from his colouring-in book and walked over to where the customer was noodling away on the keys. "Can you play _Toffee Apple_?"

One blonde eyebrow rose. "No, sorry."

"_I Feel the Earth Move_?"

"No."

"_Somebody to Love_?"

"No."

"What's the point of playing if you don't know any good songs?" Sean asked, before turning around and wandering back towards his table.

The customer stared after him for a moment before shrugging and returning to his noodling.

Lil carried his coffee across and set it down. "There you go, one macchiato. Sorry about that, he's a bit snobbish about music. His parents are instilling in him very specific tastes."

"Perfectly alright," he said, rising from the piano and turning to the table his coffee had been placed on.

He paused.

"Sorry," he called out to Lil's back, as she was already on her way back to the counter, "but I think you've brought me the wrong coffee."

"Oh, have I?" Lil asked, turning back to him. "Sorry about that Mr. -"

"Shortman," he provided. "Arnold."

"Well, Mr. Shortman, I'll just make sure Phil gets it right this time. You wanted a…"

"Macchiato," he told her.

She looked down at the glass on his table. "Uh -"

"Is there something I can help with?" Phil's voice cut in.

Lil turned around and gave him a look that distinctly said _tread lightly_. He just rolled his eyes at her. "Yes," she told him, "this gentleman is not happy with his coffee."

Phil nodded slowly. Lil loved her brother dearly, but she knew that customer service was not always his longest suit, but she decided that maybe it would be best if she just let him dig his own grave in this case. She headed back to the counter to serve the gathering customers and let the two men deal with each other.

"Well, what in particular was wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," Arnold quickly assured him. "It's just not what I ordered."

"You ordered a macchiato?"

The blonde man nodded. "Yes."

"That's a macchiato."

"No it isn't."

Phil resisted the temptation to grind his teeth. "Yes, it is. It's a long black with a shot of cold milk. That's a macchiato."

"A macchiato," Arnold said, "is a sweetened drink with whipped cream and caramel."

Phil was unable to stop a look of disgust from crossing his face. "I'm sorry, but that's not something we serve here. And it's certainly _not_ a macchiato."

"I've been drinking macchiato since I was fourteen, and that's what they've always been."

"I've been making them since I was twelve," Phil retorted, "and they haven't changed in that time, either."

Arnold groaned. "Look, I'm not interested in arguing this point with you. I've had a long day, I'm not enjoying it in the least, and I really just want to get a macchiato. Or what I believe to be a macchiato at any rate. Now, can you please make me one?"

"I'm sorry, but I honestly don't know how to make that…thing that you describe."

"Is the owner here? Maybe he'd know."

"I _am_ the owner," Phil informed him, crossing his arms.

Lil, still situated at the counter, winced and shook her head. Sean spun on his stool to face the growing conflict.

"This is good," he said. "Uncle Phil will start tapping his foot in a moment."

Lil decided that a distraction was probably needed, and spotting the folder the gentleman had left on the counter, she nudged it off and onto the floor with her elbow, scattering resumes everywhere.

"Oh, my god, I'm so sorry," she said, scrambling down onto her knees and cleaning them up.

Her tactic worked, both men turning to face her and walking over to help. By the time they got there, however, she had already cleared the documents away. "I'm so, so sorry Mr. Shortman. We'll get you a coffee - of your choice -" she said, looking pointedly at Phil - "on the house."

Both men looked at her with expressions suggesting they weren't fooled by her ruse for a second, but the tension was successfully deflated.

"Thank you," the blonde man said, before turning to face Phil. "I'm sorry to be picky. If you like I'll just make it myself."

Phil raised an eyebrow. "Make it…yourself?"

He shrugged. "I worked in a café for a few years when I was a teenager."

Phil raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. "Alright. Go nuts."

The customer proceeded behind the counter, where he expertly handled the coffee machine. Phil set out the whipped cream and found the caramel topping they used in the milkshakes for him, and watched closely as the blonde man created his drink. Phil looked at it with a definite distaste, but it seemed to keep the customer satisfied, and Chaz had spent a lot of time drilling into him that that was supposed to be the point, after all.

"Can you make a flat white?" Phil asked.

Arnold, busily putting drizzles of caramel on his drink, looked up at him. "Uh, yeah, I can."

"Long black?"

He rolled his eyes. "Any idiot can make a long black."

"You'd be surprised," Phil told him. "Cappuccino?"

"Of course."

"So you can make real coffee, as well as…whatever that thing is."

Arnold looked slightly offended, but nodded slowly.

"Have you got any plans to go to Miami in the near future?"

"No."

"And you appear to be canvassing for work."

Arnold looked down at the folder of resumes on the counter, before looking up and meeting Phil's eyes with a slight smirk on his face. "Yes."

Phil sighed. "Do you want a job?"

8 - * - * - 8

Phil raised an eyebrow as he wiped at the counter with a cloth. His interest was peaked by the newest customers to enter his cafe: Tish Tonitini, her body language completely closed off and upset, and his own wife, who appeared flustered and frustrated. Neither said a word to the other as Tish walked to the piano and sat down, while Lor came over to where he stood at the bench.

"Hey," he said, leaning across the counter and kissing her on the cheek. "What's wrong?"

"What make you think something is wrong?"

Phil rolled his eyes. "Come on."

Lor sighed. "We had a bit of an argument. I think we've found something on which we have different views. We haven't had that in a while."

"Since...us?"

"Pretty much," Lor said. "...Do you want kids?"

Phil's jaw dropped. "I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing, never mind."

Phil reached out and placed a hand on her forearm. "Lor - look - I don't know what's going on -"

"It's nothing, really - "

"But...look, you know how I feel. Someday. When we're both at a point in our lives where that's what we want," he said. "Is this what you're fighting about?"

"It's a _long_story," she said. "I should probably go and talk to her. Try and work out...whatever it is."

They both looked to the piano, where Tish was quietly playing Fur Elise while staring off into the middle distance.

Lor sighed. "Alright. Can you organise us a decaf and a latte?"

He nodded. "You bet."

She smiled at him. "I love you."

"Love you too," he told her. "Go work things out."

Lor kissed him before turning and slowly walking over to Tish.

Lor stood next to the piano, leaning very slightly on the side of it as she watched her brunette friend tap away at the keys with precision. Tish knew what she was doing without the benefits of a music sheet or neding to even think about what she was doing. It was a talent that Lor slightly envied.

"Play _Misty _for me." Lor stated simply.

Tish raised an eyebrow, turning her head slightly to the blonde, but didn't miss a note. "Ha ha."

"I'd forgotten that you played Bach so well."

"I do. Too bad this is Beethoven." Tish quipped.

Lor snapped her fingers. "Drat. I knew it was one of the B guys."

"Hmm."

Lor sighed, putting a hand to her forehead. "Are we not talking now?"

"Of course we are. This is a conversation. A completely pointless, awkward, clumsy attempt to fill the slence at that."

"Look, Tish, if I said something to upset you today, it wasn't intentional."

Tish turned to look at her friend completely, her fingers pausing in her playing to stop and adjust. She tapped out a few random notes for a moment, as though pondering. "You don't approve of my life." She stated, as she slightly adjusted her position and began the opening bars of _Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C # Minor._

"What?" Lor asked, feeling her mouth actually hang agape for a moment "Tish, I never said that."

"No. You implied it."

"No I didn't. Where the heck is this coming from?"

"From the way you reacted to basic assumptions of love and marriage."

"Huh? Why, because I'm a little skittish about having a baby?"

"No."

"Then why?! I don't even know what we're arguing about!"

"Have you had any real idea what my life has been like ever since you got together with Phil?"

Lor blinked. "Ok, I know we don't always talk as much as we should, but I had thought it was going good. You hooked up with Tino, found a job that makes you happy, you still try to do two local plays a year-I thought you were happy."

"I am happy."

"So, what's all this business about 'what your life has been like?' Lor used her fingers to make quotation marks.

TIsh nearly pounded out a sour note in spite, but desperate for something to focus on besides this conversation, she took her frustrations out on the piano keys and one of the earlier crescendos in the Rhapsody before responding. "And do you think I just woke up one day and found that my fairy godmother had given me all these fabulous presents? Lor, I had to work hard at it. At this point, I'm notashamed to admit that I had my eye on Tino since...since sometime into the period you were dating him. I never did anything. I avoided him more often than not in those times. The last thing I needed was that kind of awkwardness. When you two broke up, do you know what I felt?"

"I'm going to guess that, while sad for us, you were secretly happy?"

"You would probably think that. But I wasn't."

"Oh come on, Tish. No one is that noble. It's fine. I know you didn't do anything to break us up, so it's not like you're betraying me to take a little pleasure in it.

"I wasn't happy, Lor. I wasn't happy because I was worried about him. I mean, really worried. I knew from the start that you weren't going to make it. You're just...different people. Frankly, I never thought you two would've stayed together as long as you did. You're a great girl with a lot to offer, Lor. And Tino's a great guy with a bit of a fragile heart, but a lot of love to give. And he really got hung up on you. I couldn't just rush in to make it all better. I was there for him as a friend. But I refused to be anything more. Tino didn't need a rebound. He needed time. A lot of it. And waiting is something I've learned to be very good at.

"Are you trying to make me feel bad?" Lor asked, suddenly becoming wary.

"No. I'm trying to make you understand."

"Alright then."

"Look, without rehashing all the details, it took Tino the better part of a year to fully get over you. And I always had to be so careful not to push. I didn't want to even consider getting involved with him unless I was certain that he wasn't still in mourning. I might still be waiting for the right time if a mutual friend of ours didn't give me a push. What I'm trying to say is that it took a long time for us to be a couple, and still more time to decide that this was going to last. So after we got married, we decided not to wait long to have children. This is what I've wanted for...for what feels like half my life. And when I hear you talk about pregnancy as though it means your life is ending and you have to give up so many things...when you said that, it really hurt. This is something I've wanted to build all my life. I'm not giving up anything for this pregnancy-it's given me a feeling of completion that I don't know how else I could acquire."

Lor took a moment to process her friend's words, buying some time by taking the drinks Phil had made them and setting them gently on the piano, pushing Tish's decaf within the brunette's reach."You know, Tish, we really see things from opposite sides sometimes. I guess I forget that."

"Yes, you've made your views on pregnancy rather clear, thank you."

"No, I haven't. And I'm sorry for that." Lor sighed, tapping an index finger on her chin. "Look, it's true, I'm not ready to be pregnant. At all. But I don't really think it's some kind of curse. And I don't think it would be the end of my life. I just...don't like things I can't control. My parents are already pushing me to reproduce. And I'd like to do it in my own time. Phil and I are still kind of in the honeymoon stage. You know, sex for the sake of it?"

"Lor, I'm married, not dead. Tino and I have had sex purely for the enjoyment of each other countless times."

"Yes. But did you use contraception?"

"No."

"Were you trying to conceive?"

"Not exactly."

"Not exactly?"

"We decided long ago to let nature take its course on such matters. We haven't done anything to either encourage or discourage conception."

"Phil and I take active preacuations to prevent it."

"Even though you're married?"

"Just because we're married doesn't mean we're ready to be parents."

"Fair enough." Tish nodded. "So tell me, when will you be ready?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't know this was a race."

"It's not. But, you said you're not ready. Are either of you not mature enough?"

"We've had our moments, but I'm sure we can handle it."

"So you're just waiting for the right time?" Tish asked, halting the playing of her Rhapsody after the second crescendo and switching into a piano solo rendition of _Non Piu Andrai._

"Yes, exactly. When the time is right."

Tish looked up into Lor's blue eyes, and laughed heartily.

"Thanks for your support." Lor growled.

"Lor, as a friend, let me in on a little secret. There never is a right time. Having children is something you're either going to do or not. You don't have to rush into it. But if you just keep waiting for the opportune moment to present itself, it's never going to happen."

Lor paced back and forth along the length of the piano, absorbing her friend's words. "So let me get this straight. According to you, there's no point in Phil and I planning when to start a family."

"Now you're just misconstruing my words."

"But you said-"

"I said there would never be a good time." Tish protested. "And that much is true. Lor, you and Phil can plan it out to your heart's content. And you should be prepared. Getting pregnant is a huge responsibility. To the baby, to each other...I know you heard me say how much my life has changed about a thousand times since I got pregnant. But it's true. The readiness is all. But I did mean what I said. There's never an ideal time. Something will always be going on in your life that is less than ideal. And if either of you ever let those kind of things impact a decision this big...Lor, you can rob yourself of true happiness. If you're not ready for a baby now then that's fine. But when you are, don't think you need to hold back because the sky is cloudy. Just go with it, alright?"

Lor stopped her pacing, crossing back around to the front of the instrument. "Hey, who do you think you're talking to?"

Tish pulled back, realizing she had said the wrong thing.

"I'm the Queen of Spontaneity. My husband will back me up on this."

Phil called out from the bar. "Sorry, babe, but I'm pretty sure Reggie has you beat on that one. You can be the Duchess of Spontaneity though."

Lor crossed her arms over her chest. "You told me I was your queen."

"Under duress. Confessions and/or agreements made while you have me naked and pressed hard against the mattress hardly count."

Lor turned back to TIsh. "You see what I have to put up with? I knew I should have forced him to sign that marriage charter I drew up before the wedding."

"Also attempted under duress." Phil protested, but Lor waved him off.

Tish held a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh, then responded by segueing her Raphsody into Ode To Joy.

"Don't sell yourself too short, Lor." Tish smiled. "If you give yourself the chance, I think you'll make a far better mother than you might expect."

"You mean when I give myself the chance, right?"

"Quite."

"Sorry if I made you think I didn't approve, Tish."

"That's alright. It's my fault too. But I'm pregnant, so I'm going to plead hormones."

"I get to use that excuse if I get pregnant too, right?"

"It's one of the few perks that comes with the territory." Tish chuckled. "That, and getting your husband to wait on you hand and foot. Don't get me wrong, I try not to be cruel. But for all the effort I put into Tino's idiosyncratic phobias, sometimes a teaspoon of fear does have its benefits."

"Oh does it? That's not what you said last month when I told you I was worried about bedbugs." Tino stated, causing Tish to startle and play several wrong notes, effectively ending her classical concert.

"Tino! You're here! I, um, didn't hear you come in."

"Probably because I gave Phil the signal not to say anything. Now, you were saying something about 'a teaspoon of fear?"

Had Tish been more mobile, she would have risen from the bench and stamped her foot. "Tino, we do not have bedbugs. We wash our sheets twice a week and you keep the house immaculate. You're just being ridiculous because you read some magazine article while I was at the doctor."

"Hey, I don't hear you complaining at how fresh and clean our linens are!"

Lor watched her two friends argue, a thought coming to mind. "You know, Tino, there's a word for people who obsessively worry about things. What was it? Starts with a 'p..."

"Perceptive?" Tino asked.

8 - * - * - 8

The afternoon was just beginning to hit its late-day malaise when Angelica Pickles finally arrived at the Java Lava, laden down with shopping bags. Her son perked up upon seeing her, which she did her best to reciprocate, but Lil could clearly see that something was troubling the blonde. Nevertheless, Angelica gave her boy a hug and kissed him on the forehead and looked attentively at his colouring in, giving words of praise and encouragement as required. Lil smiled at how maternal her old childhood friend had become, against all odds.

"Hey, Angie," she called over to her. "Smoothie?"

"Please," she said, before doing a slight double take. "Where's Michael?"

"Fired," Lil told her. "Phil's been running the place but he's just ducked out the get a late lunch with Lor."

"Very late lunch," Angelica corrected. "You work here now?"

"No, just helping out for the day," she said, pulling out the required ingredients for Angelcia's drink of choice. "You look like you had a rough day."

"Could have been worse, I suppose," she said. "Work wasn't hard, but then I had to go shopping. Why is there a piano in the corner?"

"That's a long story," Lil told her, "suffice to say your cousin owes Phil four hundred bucks."

"Huh," was all Angelica could or would muster to that, and she gave her son a hug before getting up and walking over to the piano. Lil watched the way the older woman moved, so unlike her usual, carefree-to-the-point-of-carelessness self, as if the weight of the world was weighing on her shoulders.

Angelica sat down at the instrument and rolled her head around on her neck rather startlingly before picking out a slow, melancholy tune. Her son developed a look of distaste. "Mommy, play _Moon _for me."

She turned and pitted her son with a stare. "Really?"

"Really. Please?"

Angelica sighed and began playing a different song, one that Lil immediately recognised from a childhood spent watching _Sesame Street_. Sean clambered down off his stool and went and sat next to his mother, tucking himself against her side as he hummed along with her piano playing.

"Though I'd like to look down at the earth from above," Angelica cooed softly, "I would miss all the places and people I love…"

Pretty shortly, Sean was dozing off, and by the time Angelica had finished the song, he was out to the world. She took her fingers off the keyboard and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes.

Lil stared, stunned at this strange version of her childhood friend.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Angelica looked over at her. "Don't worry, you wouldn't get it."

"Try me," Lil suggested.

Angelica looked her up and down for a second, as if literally sizing her up, and sighed. "Sean's birthday is coming up. I don't know what to get Susie."

Lil raised an eyebrow. "Why do you need to get Susie something?"

Angelica placed her fingers back on the keys and began tapping out _I Don't Want to Live on the Moon_ again. "If I tell you something - something _really_ personal - can you promise you won't tell anyone else?"

Given Angelica's track record on keeping secrets, Lil wondered just how seriously this word was to be taken, but she nodded. "Alright."

"You remember when we got married, how we had it all planned out? Susie was going to get pregnant and we were going to be parents?"

"Yes, of course."

"Did you never wonder why _I _had Sean instead?"

Lil paused. "Well, sure I did. We all did. We just assumed it was because of your career or something. You being better established, it made more sense."

Angelica shrugged. "Our reasoning was actually the other way around - Susie would get pregnant because she wasn't really into the workforce yet. We wouldn't miss her wage, I'd be able to keep on working. Besides, she _wanted_ to get pregnant. She wanted, so badly, to be a mother. I'm not ashamed to admit that I kind of liked the idea of being a mother without having to go through the whole pregnancy thing."

"Has its appeal," Lil agreed. "So, what happened?"

"When you sign up for these fertility programs, they put you through a lot of tests. _A lot_. It's expensive, y'know. They don't like to take too many chances. So, we went through all the tests, and they called us in, and told us that Susie was just not going to be a candidate. She had an unusually high chance of miscarriage or rejection. Not really high, not so high that it would stop a normal couple trying."

"But too high to take that kind of chance on."

"Exactly. And in that moment, I could see her heart break. The woman I loved - the woman I married - that was never going to happen for her. So I did the only thing I could think to do: I asked how fast we could get me pregnant."

Lil stifled a chuckle. She could just imagine Angelica demanding accelerated pregnancy.

"So I had Sean. And maybe it wasn't exactly how we planned - but I don't regret it for a second. But Susie…there was nothing she wanted more in the world than to be a mother, y'know? And she couldn't be. And I'm sure that eats at her. I see the look on her face when she watches me with Sean..."

"Angelica..." Lil whimpered, tapping her foot. "You don't get it, do you?"

"What?" she asked, pausing her fingers over the keyboard.

"There's nothing more in the world Susie wants than to be a mother. And thanks to you, _she is one_. She doesn't need anything to make her forget it or make her happy. You've already done that. Now take your son home and enjoy being a family."

Angelica started, playing a sour note. Sighing, she turned back to the brunette, rolling her eyes. Susie's good manners had definitely rubbed off on her. "Thanks, Lil. I don't know why...but I think I just needed to hear that from someone else."

"I'll send you a bill." Lil smirked as she watched the older woman pick up her sleeping son, put him over her shoulder, and stroll out of the cafe. How many years had it been since they were teens, and yet Angelica still swayed her hips like she did as a teenager-not in that voluptuous manner to attract the attention of men, but in that strong, confident way she had of letting other people know who was in charge without needing to say it.

And she did it with a sleeping three year old on her shoulder. It was a talent.

8 - * - * - 8

"Your definition of a lunch hour needs some work," Lil told Phil when he finally returned to the Java Lava. Twilight was just setting in over North City, and she was slightly surprised to find that she didn't really want to go home.

"I don't wear a watch," he told her. He looked wistfully at the counter stools but in the end settled for slumping onto the piano bench. "Everything go alright? Angelica pick up Sean?"

"A little late, but yeah. She's had a rough day, but I think I helped."

"You psyched her?"

Lil rolled her eyes. "The term is 'treated'. But in this case I think it was just talking that helped."

"What do you think people go to psychiatrists for? And 'psyching' someone is going to be the correct term. Mark my words."

"Consider them marked," Lil said, grabbing a cloth and wiping down invisible spots off the counter. "Y'know, despite the boredom and stuff, I had fun today."

Phil chuckled at that. "I'm glad, really. I worry about you sometimes." He turned to the keyboard and tapped out random notes that jarred quite badly, before resituating his hand and managing _Mary Had a Little Lamb_. "Beats working at the library, huh?"

"Very much so," she said.

"You want to work here more often?"

Lil raised an eyebrow. "You're just handing out jobs like popcorn today, aren't you?"

"Well, I'm tired. Makes me generous," he said, rising from the stool and striding toward the front of the shop, where he started pulling tables in from the sidewalk.

She laughed at that. "You sure you want to work with me?" she asked, taking his place at the piano. She stared at the black and white keys dumbly, realising that not only did she not know how to play, she didn't even have the first idea how to fake playing. She settled for picking out random notes.

He shrugged. "Eh. If you annoy me too much, I'll just roster you on with Macchiato Boy."

She laughed. "Did you even read his resume? Or interview him? He's like a High School science-teaching botanist or something."

"So he'll be an interesting addition to the team," Phil argued. "I didn't hear a no, there."

She sighed. She had spent years trying _not_ to work at the Java Lava when she was a teenager. The irony was not lost on her. "Alright. In the name of getting back into the real world, I think I will work here."

Phil let out one brief bark of laughter. "Lil, if this is your idea of the real world, then we've got to get you some perspective, stat. But I guess we've got time." He looked over at her, perched on the edge of the piano stool, picking at keys in no recognisable order. "You really don't know how to play, do you?"

She snorted. "Yeah, 'cos you're such a virtuoso, Lamby-toes. Besides, does it really need to be played? It's a pretty nifty conversation piece."

8 - * - * - 8

**Episode 4: 30 Minutes or it's Free, coming next week. Reviews are always appreciated.**


	4. 30 Minutes or It's Free

Lor hung the phone up on the wall of the kitchen, sighing. "Alright, pizza's on its way."

"Edible pizza?" Reggie yelled from the living room.

"For us, anyway. Dil can have the medium pineapple and anchoivies all to himself, thanks."

"Mankind is just yet to understand my genius," Dil said, putting his feet up on the coffee table, only to get them smacked down by Phil. "Hey!"

"Hey yourself. We're going to eat off this table in a short while and I don't want my pizza to taste like anchovies _or _your feet."

"You're turning into a..._grown up_ or something, Phil."

"It's less responsibility and more laziness." Phil reminded him. "I live here, so I have to clean up. Or at least, argue with Lor over who has to clean up."

Dil thought about this for a second. "You sacrifice a lot to be married, dude."

"Yeah, but there are perks."

"You get to put on weight?"

Reggie stared at the two of them for a moment in what looked something like abject horror. "I pity whatever poor woman ends up marrying you, Dylan."

"Don't. She won't deserve your pity - she'll be smoking hot."

**From Here On  
Episode 4: "30 Minutes or it's Free"  
by Acepilot & Lord Malachite**

**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**

"Smokin' hot?" Reggie asked, opening the fridge and pulling a longneck bottle of beer out of a cardboard box. "By whose standards?" She asked,swimping the corkscrew the Devilles kept hanging on a magnet hook and using it to pop the bottle open. She took a long pull off the bottle, frowning slightly. "Hey, what gives? I agree to spend a perfectly good Saturday night mooching off of you guys, and the classiest beer in this place is a _High Life_?"

"Sorry," Phil said, "but can we pause for a moment and bask in the oxymoron that is 'classiest beer'?"

"Save it, scotch boy."

_"_Scotch isn't meant for getting plastered off of. It's an acquired taste. Kind of like anchovies. Or my father-in law."

"Not funny." Lor shouted from the living room.

"Anyway, I don't drink beer, so that's what you get for being too lazy to do the bottle shop run yourself."

Reggie glared at him and turned to Dil. "I'll give you five bucks to run down the street and get me something decent."

"Too late for booze runs. You'll just have to enjoy the high life while we wait for the pizza," Dil told her

Reggie slumped back down on the couch and nursed her longneck. "You guys have no taste."

"I would be careful bandying that phrase around. I've seen your CD collection," Phil told her.

"Why, because the albums I own can still be heard on the radio today?" Reggie asked.

"So can mine. Minus the agonizingly unfunny DJs and ads for underage teenie bopper clubs," Phil said.

"I take it back," Dil said. "I don't think you've become a grown up at all."

"When you grow up with a twin sister, arguing is an art you learn to master early and often," Phil smirked.

"_You_ mastered arguing? Lil might have. You were just along for the ride."

Any possible retort Phil might have made was cut short by the sound of the phone ringing. Dil snatched it off the end table and hit recieve. "DeVille Pizzeria, we never close. Oh, hey Lil. Good timing. Who always won your arguments? You or Phil?"

"Give me that!" Phil attempted to snatch the phone from his friend, while the red-haired man played keep away.

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I thought, you might want to remind him of that, though."

Phil moved to slump back into the chair, only to run into another body. He turned to see his wife smirking triumphantly up at him. He growled at her before turning back to Dil. "Of course _she'd_ say that. She can't lose this argument if _you're _the one holding the phone. What does she want, anyway?"

Dil chuckled at some kind of joke between himself and the absent DeVille sister. "Right. Right. I don't know. Let me ask." Dil lowered the handset onto his lap. "Lil says she needs to know where you keep the spare mop and bucket."

"They should be out the back near the coffee beans. Why?"

Dil relayed the message and paused to listen to the response. "She says, 'just in case'."

Phil stared at him for a moment, before dropping down on to the arm of the chair himself. "I'm not going in to work."

"I _forbid _you to go to work." Lor added. "You spend entirely too much time in that place lately.

"Now that we've finally got some reliable help, that should change." Phil leaned back in his chair, looking up into the eyes of his wife who was leaning over the back of the chair.

"Great. Now if we could just have less friends, we might actually do some of the things that married couples do."

"Ha ha." Reggie stated, rummaging through the liquor cabinet in search of something more her speed. "You know you'd miss me too much. Who else is going to introduce some irresponsibility into your lives?"

Dil hung up the phone with a smile. "Sounds like the hired help is in for a busy night."

"What - no, no, y'know what, I don't want to know."

"How long did the pizza place say our pizza is going to take?" Reggie asked. "Just so I know for sure if there's time to run down to the bottle shop."

"There isn't," Lor said. "They're generally very fast."

"Trust you to have the world's only reliable pizza delivery. You guys got a deck of cards?"

"I think there's a deck in one of the junk drawers. But it might be missing a few cards." Phil advised.

"That's okay." Dil stated. "I don't mind playing without a full deck."

Reggie rolled her eyes, opening her mouth to say something and then closing it again. "Never mind. That one's too easy."

"Sometimes I like to set you up for a free kick," Dil explained. "I can't have all the fun."

"I would be having fun if we had some decent booze. Have you guys even gone to a liquor since you got married?" Reggie moaned.

Phil sighed. "It's on our to do list."

Dil's eyes narrowed. "That sounded almost genuine. You guys don't actually have a to-do list, do you?"

Lor and Phil exchanged a glance. "A short one," Phil told him. "I think it says something like 'Go to liquor shop' and 'Have lots of sex'."

"Well based on your liquor cabinet, it's obvious which of those tasks is being neglected for the other." She retreated back to the fridge, pushing based the case of beer and finding a few half-empty six packs of malt liquor. "_Smirnoff Ice_? It's better than the _High Life,_but I'll need like six of these to even get a buzz."

"You know, Reg, the entire object of the evening isn't to get wasted." Dil chided.

"I know that. We're supposed to get wasted while eating pizza and watching bad movies."

"Hey! _The Warriors _is a cinematic masterpiece," Phil argued.

"It's a bad movie," Lor corrected him. "I mean, it's a so-bad-it's-good bad movie. But still..."

"It's got awesome music and a lot of pointless violence and the acting - well..." Phil trailed off anticlimactically. "Yeah, okay, so it's not a _great_ movie. But it's still a more convincing portrayal of life in New York than _Fame_ was."

Just as _that_ can of worms was begging to be opened, the phone rang once again. Lor scooped it up.

"North City Moviegoers Society. Yes, Arnold, how can I help you?"

Phil held his hand out for the phone but Lor batted it away.

"I don't know. I'll ask." Lor turned to face her husband. "Arnold would like to know what, roughly, the coverage is on the Java Lava's insurance policy."

Phil's entire body stilled for a moment, before he asked, slowly and deliberately, "Why?"

"He wants to know why," Lor told Arnold. There was another pause as she got her answer, before she turned back to Phil and said, "Arnold says it's best not to trouble yourself with such things."

Phil felt a heaviness settle into his guts. "I'm not going into work."

"He's not coming into work," Lor reiterated over the phone. She listened and nodded for a second. "Arnold says that's a good idea."

8 - * - * - 8

"Alright, so where's this pizza, anyway," Reggie asked. "I could have been to the bottle shop and back twice in the time we've been waiting."

Lor looked at her. "It's been _fifteen minutes_."

"I walk fast."

"Why are you so determined to get hammered tonight, anyway?" Phil asked. "Not like you broke up with someone or anything."

"No, I'm just basking in the newfound joy of unemp - "

There was a long pause.

"Unemp?" Dil asked.

"Yeah, uh, unemp...eccable...beer snobber?"

"Uh huh." Phil stated, a telltale tapping of his foot beginning.

"Yeah, didn't think you were going to buy that one..."

"What happened, anyway? You piss off one too many higher ups?"

"No. Well, yes, but no. They're closing the paper."

There was another long pause.

"That bites," Dil finally offered.

Phil finally turned to face his wife. "Funny that. They're closing the paper - at which you're an employee as well - and you're not losing _your_ job. Because I'm sure that's something you would have told your husband."

Lor sent her friend a dirty look. "I was _going _to tell you."

"When?" Phil asked, throwing his arms up in the air. "When our rent check bounces?"

"No, I was just...planning it out. For when you would be in a better mood. And your mind was more clouded.

"My mind does not get clouded."

"When you woke up next to me on the living room floor last month, you distinctly asked me how we got there."

"And_ you_said you didn't remember."

"Well, neither did you."

"Have you two ever thought of doing a reality series?" Dil interjected.

Phil slumped back down on the couch. "Well. Okay."

Lor looked at him worriedly. "Are you mad? I'll get another job."

He sighed. "I'm more upset about being lied to. I can take care of us financially. But you could have told me. I could take it."

"Despite recent evidence to the contrary," Reggie muttered.

"And I never lied to you." Lor protested. "I just...left out a few details. We'll be fine, trust me. Reggie and I have a lot of talent to offer. We'll land on our feet."

"And it's not like you're falling from too great a height," Dil noted, before getting slapped over the back of the head by Reggie.

"At least we were off the ground, Pickles."

"Hey, I've just got a lot of irons in the fire, Reg. You can't expect to tie me down."

"Alright, I'm starting to get disturbed by the imagery here."

"I second that," Lor said. "When this pizza arrives I do want to be able to eat it without immediately regurgitating."

"I'd settle for still having my appetite." Reggie added. "Speaking of which, I'm really thinking its time I hitup that bottle store and brought back something quaffable."

"I'm telling you the pizza will be here before you're back," Phil told her. "If the delivery is more than thirty minutes, the pizza is free. It's been twenty-three minutes, the bottle shop is five minutes each way - and it's a metaphysical impossiblity for a pizza shop to give away free food."

"That doesn't mean they won't be late. They'll just quibble about the time of your order. Besides, if they're cutting it this close, how do you know the drier isn't some rookie who got lost and gave our order to some people in a completely different neighborhood?"

Dil stared at her for a moment. "You _really_ want to get drunk, don't you?"

"I thought I had made hat clear. If I leave this apartment tonight in a clear state of mind, I am not responsible for what happens."

"The pizza place has questionable hygeine. You'll be in an altered state of mind, trust me."

"If I find hair in my food, I am going down there. This is my night to get lit up and lament the loss of my first serious job in a long time."

Dil chuckled. "Hey, I think we're all sorry for your loss. Phil especially. But I'm pretty sure if Arnold were here, he would classify your complaints as 'first-world problems."

Before Reggie could fire off another shot in return, the phone rang yet again. Lor leapt upon the phone with a vengeance. "International House of Bedlam. Lobotomys on the hour every hour. Arnold! Funny, we were just talking about you. No, no, you're not interrupting. What's up?"

Phil felt his body getting increasingly tense as he waited to find out what had befallen his cafe now.

Lor finally turned to him. "If one were to be looking for the fusebox in the Java Lava -"

"I'm going into work."

"No you're not!" Lor ordered. "Where's the fusebox?"

"It's in the store-room, in the back closet," Phil said. "I'm going in."

"Stop him!" Lor ordered the others. Reggie and Dil jumped on Phil as he made for the door, Reggie around his legs and Dil clutched to his waist as he dragged them both for the door. "No, Phil isn't coming in," she told Arnold. "If he does, I'll be mightily impressed."

"Let me go!" Phil shouted.

"No, nothing unusual is happening here," Lor assured Arnold.

"You are going to enjoy a relaxing night off!" Reggie ordered Phil.

"Not like this I'm not!" Phil said, prying an arm free of Dil's grasp, grabbing the front door and flinging it open -

- only to find a man standing in front of him, clutching a pizza, and absorbed completely by the tableau he was staring at. The standoff persisted for a full minute, before the man with the box said, "One medium anchovies and pineapple, one large supreme?"

Phil looked up at the deliveryman, with an awkward smile on his face. "That's us." He stated, turning his head around to face Reggie as best he could. "Told ya."

She stuck her tongue out at him in retort.

"That'll be $23.69"

Lor, shaking her head like a long-suffering wife, twirled the portable handset in her hands, stuffing it into the pocket of her jeans. She reached into Phil's back pocket and removed her husbands wallet, taking out two bills. "Here's thirty to forget everything you saw here. She said, taking the cardboard boxes and shutting the door fast, bolting it. "Dinner is served. And you're still not going in."

"Can I go in tomorrow?"

"Not if the police tape is still up."

8 - * - * - 8

**Episode 5: Skates, will be out next week. In the meantime, do let us know what you thought about this one.**


	5. Skates

**From Here On  
****Episode 1.5 ****–**** Skates**

**by Acepilot & LordMalachite**

**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**

**8 - * - * - 8  
****March, 2014 (About eighteen months ago)  
8 - * - * - 8**

The bar was reasonably full, but not so loud that Phil couldn't hear himself think – or his companions speak. Not that they were talking about much, anyway – Carver was regaling them with tales of conquest while Jackson told Tino about all the joys and wonders of married life. Oddly they didn't seem to match up with any of the stories Phil had heard from Susie and Angelica on that subject, but he guessed that this was the difference in male and female perspectives rearing its head again.

Eventually, Tino slipped away and took a seat next to him. "Why oh why did I let Carver talk me into having one of these?"

Phil shrugged, taking a sip of his scotch. "Tradition?"

Tino caught the eye of the barman and indicated he'd like another beer before turning back to Phil. "Don't get me started on _traditions_. If I hear one more word said about tradition I'll blow my top."

"The wedding is getting a bit...old-school," he offered, steering clear as requested of the word _traditional_, "for your tastes, huh?"

"A tad," Tino agreed. "We'd planned this really nice ceremony. Then Tish's mother got involved. I don't think I'd quite bargained on exactly how involved that woman would get."

"Why," Phil asked, starting to sound a little fearful, "how involved has she gotten?"

"There's a _yak_ of some sort in my wedding now," Tino informed him. "And if it's not yak wool in my suit, I don't want to know about it."

"I think that's perfectly reasonable," Phil told him. "I mean, a man should have a say on how many yaks are involved in his own wedding. And zero seems like a perfectly good number from where I stand."

Tino chuckled. "You and Lor are so lucky, you know."

Phil tracked the conversation back a little to see where this had come from. "Sorry, run that one by me again?"

Tino shrugged. "You and Lor. You'll never have to go through all this...craziness. Wedding planning. Wedding days. It's all just nuts. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love Tish – and I'll do anything for her, even this. I just...at times, I can see the appeal in living unconventionally."

"Is that what they're calling it these days?" Phil asked. He knew that he and Lor weren't exactly...the most typical of couples. Even ranked amongst the couples they knew. The whole time that Tish and Tino had been planning their rabbi-and-yaks wedding like something out of Mrs. Katsufrakis' old country dreams, Lor and Phil had been offering smart-ass comments and wry observations about how crazy it all was. Phil had walked Susie down the aisle but even then had had words to say about the extravagance of her and Angelica's wedding – which, he had been alarmed to discover, was remarkably scaled down from Angelica's initial plans.

Phil realised with a start that he and Lor had been together for over two years and not once had they ever taken any sort of significant step in their relationship – he supposed because they were already _there_. They lived together before they got together, so that step was ridiculous – even when they moved to North City they were just shifting apartments. They had first had sex the night they got together and they'd sort of been at a plateau of togetherness ever since.

He contrasted this in his mind with Tino and Tish, who had gotten together, quietly in the night, and had dated, eventually moved in together, which had led to Tino proposing and Tish accepting and now to the point where tomorrow they were to be married.

"Well, yeah. But you two are so...happy, I guess. I mean, why mess with what works, right?" Tino chuckled, scooping up his beer and taking a swig. "Here's to the girls of our dreams, huh, Phil?"

Phil nodded, clinking his glass against Tino's before taking another, significantly longer pull this time. "Here's to them indeed."

8 - * - * - 8

Phil opened one eye, very, very slowly, at the sound of a far too chipper voice in his ear. "Wakey wakey. We're going to the chapel. Or the woods near the chapel, anyway."

"Awww..." he groaned, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose where he felt a slight headache beginning. "I can't get married today, I'm sick."

A hand plucked his own away and she lent down to press a soft kiss to his forehead. "Well, good thing you're not getting married, sunshine. And I'm not sure that being hungover from a raging kegger at a strip-club technically counts as 'sick'."

Phil blinked his eyes fully open and the face of Lor McQuarrie gradually swam into view above him, long blonde hair hanging around her face, drifting down to his and cocooning them both in their own little world. She was smiling broadly at him and, despite the slight pain blossoming behind his eyes, he smiled back at her. "I'm sure I could get it reclassified. And we definitely didn't go to a strip-club."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Really? I thought that was what young men did when one of you is about to be shackled to the opposite gender for the rest of your life."

He shrugged. "I don't know about young men. But _the boys_ and I had a very nice evening of drinking in a licensed premises with no naked women." He made a face suggesting he'd swallowed something disgusting. "I don't even want to imagine what going to a strip-club with Carver, Tino and friends might be like. Awkward, would be my first guess. Wildly inappropriate might run a close second."

"You have a valid point," she agreed, dropping down from where she leant across him to snuggle into his neck. "It mustn't have gone too late, though – you were already dead to the world when I got in last night."

He sighed. "Yeah, well, the evening peaked early. You drink one bottle of scotch, you've drunk them all. I think Jackson and I might have had a very brief contest with a bottle of vodka, but I couldn't tell you what context the vodka was used in."

"As long as you had fun," she told him.

"I think I did," he said. "Get back to me when I've had some painkillers."

"Ah," she said, reaching over to the bedside table and bringing back with her a glass of water and a packet of Panadol. "Never let it be said that I let my man suffer, even when it is his own stupid fault."

"You're the best girlfriend ever," he assured her, wrapping an arm around her neck to pull her to him for a kiss. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said, rising. "Now, take your remedy and then we've got to get ready. We do have a wedding to get to."

"I hate showers in hotels," he said, pushing himself up into a sitting position so he could accept the water and pills, knocking them back quickly. "There's never any pressure."

"Well, if you don't get in and have one quickly, we'll be late, Tish will never speak to me again and I'll make your life miserable for it," Lor told him, before smiling sweetly. "Enough pressure?"

"Plenty," he assured her, pulling himself out of the bed and heading toward the bathroom, before he caught sight of his reflection in the TV screen, which caused him to look down at the fluro pink shirt he was wearing. "I think I might remember something about the punishment for losing the game with the vodka now."

8 - * - * - 8

"Are we going to be late?" Lor asked, fumbling in vain for the zip on the back of her dress.

"We're not going to be late," Phil assured her, pushing his collar up and trying to make it hold stiff. "We have _plenty _of time. It's not like we're driving from home."

"I know. But we can't be late, Phil. I can't emphasise enough how much we can't be late."

"I still don't know why I had to be an usher," Phil grumbled, staring in the mirror and trying to work out how exactly his tie was meant to tie.

"So I don't have to dance with Carver, I think was the basic reasoning," Lor informed him, watching him struggle with his formal wear. She'd have laughed if not for the fact that she was doing little better. "We're not going to be late."

"We might be if I can't ever work out this _stupid_ tie," he finally caved in. "Can you..."

She chuckled as she walked crossed the room to where he stood, looking reasonably ridiculous in a suit missing its shoes and tie, to help him. "I can't believe that you, a fully grown man, can't tie your own tie," she told him, pushing up his collar and wrapping the contested item of clothing around his neck.

He raised an eyebrow. "Says the woman who is about five minutes away from asking me to do her hair."

Lor stuck her tongue out at him. "I could do it myself," she informed him in a very matter-of-fact like tone of voice, leaning in to make sure she had the tie right.

She felt his breath on her forehead as she did so, and felt his fingers toying with her hair. "No, you can't."

"No, I can't," she admitted, feeling a slight shake in her knees as his hands wrapped around her back.

"I see I'm not the only one having problems with the formal wear," he pointed out as his fingers began tracing patterns on the skin of her back.

She breathed deeply – or as deeply as she could. "Stop that," she ordered him.

"Stop what?" A voice that wouldn't melt butter came from her boyfriend's mouth, but she knew better.

"You know exactly what," she told him, straightening his tie and willing herself to break free of his hold and walk away.

It didn't quite work out like that.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he told her, tugging slightly at the loose dress, encouraging a downward trajectory.

"We really will be late if you continue down this path," she pointed out.

"We don't have to leave for nearly an hour," he returned, leaning down to nuzzle into her neck. "And you've just shown that you can sort this tie bizzo out in less than three minutes. So I'll bet we won't be late at all."

"Phil..." she groaned, feeling his short nails trail down her back, leaving her head lolling backwards and her eyes somewhere deep in the back of her skull. "If we're late, I'm going to kill you."

"Well, I do like the pressure..."

They ended up being five minutes early. And somewhat happier for it.

8 - * - * - 8

"There are so many jokes I want to make at this juncture," Phil told his ex at the reception. "But they all seem so easy. And that's odd, because do you know how rare it is that a _Fiddler on the Roof_ joke is _easy_?"

"Pretty rarely," Kimi agreed, resisting the temptation to tug at her dress again to try and make it closer to her own body shape. She had been attempting this all day and it was ultimately getting her nowhere. "I hope that my mother doesn't plan some ultra-traditionalist Japanese extravaganza when I get married."

"I can't see her getting too carried away," Phil assured her. "I'd be more worried about your Dad getting involved, if I were you."

"I thought you were getting along well with Dad these days."

Phil shrugged. "I am, I am. But the man has the artistic instincts of..." he paused. "What's something with really poor artistic instincts?"

Kimi offered a puzzled glance. "Dunno."

Phil pondered on it for a moment. "A fashion designer. The man has the aesthetic appreciation of a fashion designer. As in, none at all."

"I'd caught that it was meant to be negative, yes."

"We had a bit of a tiff over my wanting to repaint the Java Lava slightly. I think I'm actually going to have to buy him out of it before I get my way."

"The perils of being a business partner," Kimi agreed. "Have they opened the bar yet?"

"I got the guy to promise we'd be the first people he'd tell," Phil assured her. "How much longer did the receiving line have to go when you went through it?"

"A fair distance," she told him. "Your _grrrl_friend won't be with us for a while yet."

He shrugged. "Rather her than me."

She snorted. "You won't have to go through one of these until Dil gets married. Or maybe Chuckie."

Phil raised an eyebrow. "How do you figure?"

Kimi laughed. "Oh, well, I mean – I guess Tommy would be the other option and...well, I really can't see it, can you?"

Phil's mind was stuck a few sentences back, however. "No, I mean, why would I have to wait for someone else to get married?"

"Well, it's not like you and Lor are likely to be getting married any time soon, is it?"

Phil bit his lip. "Well, I don't know. I guess I've not thought about it."

It was a lie. Only a few hours ago, when very briefly basking in the afterglow before Lor had very physically dragged him from their hotel room bed to get ready – again – for the wedding, he'd thought about his and Lor's relationship. And whether or not they were every going to get married.

Part of him knew that what Tino had said to him last night – what Kimi had said to him just now – rang true. He and Lor bucked convention, they mocked it. It was simply what they did. The journalist and the artist, casting their frequently cynical views of the world from the safety of their little two-person existence, on which no-one was allowed, really, to intrude. He and Lor were comfortable together, and he knew that there was little, if anything, missing from their lives as they were.

Marriage, however, was something else. Something...different for them, something they'd never really talked about.

Maybe, Phil thought, they should talk about it.

Later.

8 - * - * - 8

Lor's fingers were growing numb as she shook hands with what had to be the hundredth person this evening, and she wondered vaguely when Tish and Tino had made the time to _meet_ all these people.

"How're you holding up?" Carver asked, standing next to her – albeit wavering slightly.

She watched him trying very hard to hold himself up. "Better than you, by the looks of it. What exactly _happened_ at the party last night?"

"I'm taking it to my grave," he told her.

"Can you even remember?"

"I'm sure I will before the 'to-my-grave' bit becomes relevant," he assured her. "I do remember that Tino and Phil were good boys. You two have nothing to worry about. They wouldn't even let me take us to a strip club."

"I heard."

"I swear," Carver told her, in between guests wringing their respective hands, "you've got that boy whipped. And you didn't even have to con him into marrying you. If it didn't go against the code of guyhood, I'd congratulate you."

Lor raised an eyebrow. "Thank you?"

Carver shrugged. "You've got a good thing going, in my view – he's in there one-hundred percent. I'm happy for you."

She smiled at him, slightly more genuinely this time. "Thank you, Carver."

"You're welcome," he told her. "Now, I don't suppose you're carrying asprin?"

"In this dress?" she pointed out the obvious, gesturing to the blatant lack of pockets on her outfit. "Phil's got some. Good boy he may be, he's still gotta remember his limits fall short of a bottle of vodka."

"Don't tell him this," Carver suggested. "But it wasn't vodka."

"What was it, then?" Lor asked.

Carver shrugged. "Well, so many things are different from what they appear to be. Who are we to say what something is or isn't, or indeed - "

"Alright, law boy. No federal case, or no aspirin."

Carver nodded. "I can get along with that."

What seemed like hours later, but Lor knew to be more like less than fifteen minutes, everyone was inside and seated, and Lor had shaken more hands and been kissed on the cheek by more old people than she ever cared to remember. Trying to keep track of the guests had been dizzying, and she was growing increasingly desperate to rush to the head table, where Phil and Kimi were holding court, Kimi tossing sugared almonds in the air and catching them in her mouth while Phil was trying to make Tish's parents laugh at what she was sure was a pretty poor joke.

By the time she, Carver, Tino and Tish arrived, they were all drained for energy and pretty promptly slumped into their respective seats.

"Wow. Look out – the party has definitely arrived," Kimi observed, resting a hand on her forehead. "We're gonna have to be careful that this infectious atmosphere doesn't spill over or there will be chaos in the streets."

Tino rolled his eyes. "Are you quite done?"

Kimi grinned. "Quite."

Phil grabbed the bottom of Lor's chair and tugged it – and, as a result, her – toward him. "Hey there pretty lady."

She smiled at him. "Been scaring the older generation?"

"Eh, you should have heard the dirty jokes they tell when _you're _not around," he informed her. "I don't know where Mr. Katsufrakis heard the one about the salmon, the bucket and the cream cheese but I'll be telling _that_ one at parties."

8 - * - * - 8

Lor didn't even look up when somebody pulled her headphones down. It had happened too many times now to be a surprise.

"Have you got that interview with Adams ready for the pasters?" Reggie asked, leaning over Lor's shoulder and stealing a malteser from the bag on her desk. Now that she wasn't under quite such pressure to fit into a maid of honour dress, she had finally been indulging her sweet tooth.

"Five minutes," she advised her colleague. "There was a bit more there and I wasn't sure whether I should go with the stuff about Symonds or the 'three year plan'."

"The 'three-year-plan' is rubbish," Reggie opined. "Bunch of big talk to keep the CEOs happy. Run with Symonds. That's actual news."

"My thoughts exactly," Lor agreed, saving the file with some final changes and depositing into the pasters folder. "Why did they get you to ask me about it, out of curiosity? They could have just rung me."

"You're phone's been ringing for five minutes, Lor," Reggie told her. "Where are you today?"

"Anywhere but here," Lor admitted, stretching out the kink she frequently got in her arms from typing too long. "I'm at weddings and birthdays and anywhere at all but here."

"Ah, yes, the legendary DeVille birthday bash," Reggie recalled. "That's next Saturday night, isn't it?"

"Yes," Lor told her, biting her lip. "I've got a problem, Reggie."

"It's a bad day to break up with him, if that's what you're thinking," Reggie informed her.

Lor rolled her eyes dramatically. "Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. No, a somewhat more traditional problem than that."

"Shoot," Reggie suggested, returning to her desk behind Lor's. They both swivelled their chairs around to meet in the middle.

"I don't know what to get him," she confessed.

Reggie laughed – quite loudly. "How can you not know what to get him? You've been going out for...two years?"

"Three," Lor corrected her. "Three years. Art supplies are too...cliche. And impersonal. I've got to get him something he'll really love."

"You, naked, on a bed?"

Lor rolled her eyes. "Hardly special."

"Even after three years?"

Lor ignored her friend. "I just...I want it to be special. This year, I think it needs to be special."

Reggie raised an eyebrow. "Why this year?"

Lor sighed. "I dunno. I'm just...lately, I've been...thinking."

"Dangerous," Reggie immediately chastised. "I prescribe soap operas, stat. That'll clear that thinking right up."

"Have you ever been in a relationship and wondered, 'but where is it going'?" Lor asked.

Reggie shook her head. "No."

Lor was slightly taken aback by this. "Just no?"

"Yeah, just no. Relationships, for me, are something that should be simple. If I'm wondering things, then it means something has gone wrong somewhere, and so I get out while I still can."

"In some ways, I actually envy you," Lor told her. "Of course, in others, I don't in the slightest. But the thing is that I...I guess I'm just wondering these days what's next for me and Phil. We've been together for three years, and we live together, have our apartment together, and it's all really wonderful, but I guess I just don't know what comes _next_ for us."

"Why does anything have to come next?" Reggie asked. "Jeez, Lor, you sound like you want him to propose or something."

Lor bit her lower lip. "No. I mean, I don't think that's really...us, is it?"

Reggie shrugged. "I don't know. I mean, you guys never struck me as the type. I thought you were happy just being together. But, if these thoughts are starting to cross your mind, maybe you're not."

"I don't know either," Lor admitted. "We've never talked about it. I don't think he wants to get married..." Lor sighed and ran her hands through her hair. "It's just Tino and Tish's wedding, that's all it is. It's messing with my mind, making me think about things like this. I'll get over it."

Reggie looked doubtful, but shrugged and squeezed the younger woman's shoulder. "Whatever you say, Lor," she assured her friend. "So, what _are_ you going to get him for his birthday?"

8 - * - * - 8

Phil struggled to not make a face as he forced the coffee down his throat. "What the hell kind of blend is this?" he asked, reaching for the bag the Supreme Blend salesman was trying to unload on him.

"It's a single origin," the other man told him. "From right here in the US of A."

"We grow coffee now?" Phil asked, grabbing a glass and filling it quickly with water. "I can't sell this. My customers would riot."

"We've had very good market responses to it," the salesman assured him.

"Patriots," Phil suggested. "Look at the British motorcycle industry. They make utter garbage but people keep it alive out of sheer jingoism."

"Two bags," the salesman suggested. "Trial run."

"One bag," Phil told him, "and I'm _not_ serving it as single origin."

"Do as you please with it," he said.

"And I still want my other beans."

"Of course, of course. Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. DeVille."

"Wish I could say the same," Phil muttered as the other man filled out his order forms and left.

"Is it really that bad?" Chaz asked, once the salesman had departed.

"You're more than welcome to try it," Phil told him, handing him the cup. "It's _way_ too bitter. It'll blend okay with that Colombian one we got last week."

Chaz took a sip and practically spat it back out again. "Oh, wow."

"See what I mean?" Phil asked, sighing as he removed the dosing chamber and banged it very hard over the ground bin, trying to be sure he got all traces of the bitter stuff out before he made anyone else's coffee.

"It certainly has a...complex aftertaste," Chaz offered.

"We put that on the blackboard and the snobs will be all over it," Phil told him with a smile. "A smokey and edgy American grind with a deep, complex aftertaste."

"It's all in the marketing," Chaz agreed. "Quiet day today."

"It'll pick up," Phil told him. "It always does."

"I know," Chaz said. "I just guess I feel the slow times a bit more than I used to. I must be getting old."

"Happens to all of us, as I understand it," Phil told him. "You know I can handle things if you want to go home."

"I know, I know," Chaz said, "but I quite like the work, even if it is quiet and dull. I haven't quite gotten used to the idea of...retirement yet."

"Not meaning to sound like I'm rushing you out the door or anything," Phil told him, "but you know you're unlikely to get more used to it if you keep coming to work."

Chaz laughed. "Phil, when you're as young as you are, I know you find work to be a distraction from everything else in your life - your girlfriend, your friends, your hobbies - but when you get to my age, it's harder and harder to be excited by things."

"What about marriage?" Phil asked.

Chaz paused. "Pardon?"

"Does marriage not still have the same...allure of satisfaction that it once did?"

Chaz seemed to contemplate his answer for an inordinate amount of time before asking, "Is this a question about sex?"

Phil waved his open palms in front of himself rapidly. "Oh, god, no," he told the older man. "Not about sex. Just about...marriage."

"Well..." It was quite clear to Phil that his colleague was struggling for words. "Marriage is an incredibly special thing, Phil. I'm glad to be married to Kira and we have a full and happy life together. It's not what it once was - some things change but that's not an issue with the marriage but rather just the passing of time and the way people change. Why do you ask?"

Phil shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I've been thinking about it all a lot lately."

"What's brought this on?"

"I...well, I don't know. Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"You know me pretty much as well as anyone - do you think the idea that Lor and I would get married is so...laughable?"

Chaz raised an eyebrow. "You and Lor are getting married?"

"No, we're not," Phil sighed. "I mean, we've not even talked about it or anything. But ever since Tino and Tish got married, everyone seems to be voicing their opinion that I'm lucky I'm not going to be getting married any time soon."

"Well...are you going to?"

"I don't know," Phil admitted. "I've kind of never thought about it, I guess. We've had things so good for the last few years, so..."

"Why change it?"

"Exactly."

Chaz shrugged. "I don't know what to tell you. I don't for an instant regret marrying Kira. That said, she and I married relatively quickly - we were barely together two months before deciding to tie the knot. You and Lor have been together for three years and...you've _really_ never talked about it?"

"No," Phil said. "We really never have. I guess I can kind of see where everyone is coming from when they say things like that. I mean, can you see either of us getting dressed up in fancy clothes like that? Dragging everyone to some church? Asking if you'd prefer the chicken or the fish? Can you see Lor wearing anything like a _diamond ring_? She'd flip over having something that expensive and gaudy on her finger all the time."

"I guess," Chaz said. "I can't help but wonder, however, if you're perhaps focussing on the fine details at the expense of the bigger picture, however."

"Well, there's plenty of them," Phil pointed out. "Judging by the twitch that Tino was developing in the last couple of days before his wedding, there's plenty of fine details to be overwhelmed by."

Chaz nodded slowly, as if still thinking. "I guess," he said, reluctantly.

"Anyway, sorry to have run off with you on this tangent," Phil said, snapping himself out of his contemplation. "You wanted to talk about the purchasing?"

Chaz was torn - he did, actually, quite want to talk to Phil about this issue of marriage that the younger man had brought up. He felt there were a few things that still needed saying.

But they _did_ need to talk about the purchasing. And if they didn't get to it soon they never would.

"Alright," Chaz said. "We've got a few issues with that, yes."

8 - * - * - 8

Lor stepped into the flat and dropped her bag on the couch. She knew her boyfriend was home, if only because Otis Redding was on at a reasonably mellow volume that seemed to fill the apartment without being overbearing. "Phil?"

There was no response so she crossed the surprisingly tidy living and dining room - and noticed the table was set for an oddly formal dinner. She wondered if she'd forgotten they were expecting company or something and was about to kick herself for doing so when she noticed that there were only two place settings laid out - meaning it was just for her and Phil.

She stepped into the hallway leading to the bedrooms and bathroom and instantly deduced her boyfriend's location - the shower was running. She pushed the bathroom door open. "Phil?"

"In here," he said. "Well, obviously."

"If it wasn't you I was going to be very concerned," she agreed. "What are you doing?"

There was a squeak of taps being turned and the shower stopped running. "I'm plotting the overthrow of the free world," he told her. "What do you think I'm doing in the shower?"

She crossed the bathroom and sat down on the laundry hamper. "With you, who knows?"

He pulled the curtain open and stepped out, reaching for his towel, before noticing that she was still in the room. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she returned, rising from the hamper and kissing him as he grabbed the towel. She let him go so he could quickly rub himself down, messing up his hair as he rubbed it vigorously. "What I more meant by my earlier question was - what's with the dinner set up out in the lounge?"

"Oh, that," he said. "I was rather hoping it would be through cooking before you got home, but I guess not. I was making us dinner."

"For any particular reason?" she asked, wondering if she'd forgotten something.

He shrugged. "No, not really. Just with all the chaos you've been having at work since the wedding and that, we haven't had a chance to have a date lately, and I wanted to..."

She kissed him again. "That's fine," she said. "Okay, cool. Let me get cleaned up and I'll be out in a minute."

"With any other girl I'd doubt that, but with you I'll take your word on it," he said, smiling at her. "See you out there."

After dinner they found themselves lying on the couch, Lor tucked into the crook of Phil's neck as they watched a movie. It wasn't quite the same as their weekly jaunts to the Galaxy Theatre back in college but it was the next best thing, given distance had made their preferred cinema difficult to get to.

"I like this," she told him.

Phil looked down at the top of her head. "Like what?"

"I like that we've gotten to this point where we can just...be like this," she said. "Together. There doesn't need to be anything but us. We could have gone out or whatever but to be honest I'm just as happy to be here."

Phil raised an eyebrow but didn't comment, merely clawing up his fingernails and lightly running them up and down Lor's arm. She sighed and turned her arm over so he could get at the underside of it and tucked herself in closer to his body. "I could do this forever," she told him.

He looked down at the girl he was with. And smiled

"Yeah," he said, "me too."

8 - * - * - 8

"I don't quite understand what you're expecting to find here," Dil told him.

"Just look for something that seems to express Lor to you," Phil suggested.

"Why couldn't you be traditional and do this with a diamond ring?" Dil asked, leaning over the counter of the jewellery shop. "Emerald?"

"No, I don't think it should be anything too...flashy," Phil told him. "Lor wouldn't want to wear it."

"Has Lor ever worn a ring in her life?"

Phil thought about it for a second. "No, I don't think so."

"Maybe it shouldn't be a ring then," Dil suggested. "I mean, you two do things your own way all the time already. Maybe this could be another."

Phil shrugged. "Maybe. I just need to find...something. Something...right."

"So when are you going to do it?" Dil asked, squinting at a sapphire-adorned bracelet that cost more than he and Phil made in a year put together.

"I don't know," he said. "After my birthday sometime. Not too long from now, though. I want to do it soon. I'll know the right moment when it comes."

"What's the rush?"

"I dunno," Phil said. "I just...I really, really want to be married to her."

Dil laughed. "I don't get you."

"That's alright. I'm not looking to marry _you_." Phil stopped dead before a display of necklaces. "That one. That's it."

8 - * - * - 8

"Are we going to be late?" Phil asked.

"No, we're not going to be late," Lor told him, before sticking her head out of the bathroom. "Is that what you're wearing?"

Phil looked down at himself. "Yeah," he said. "Why?"

She shook her head. "Not that formal. And warmer."

He rolled his eyes before shrugging off his suit jacket and tugging at his shirt. "Where's the party, anyway?"

"There isn't one. It's just us tonight."

Phil rasied an eyebrow. "Okay."

"Warmer. Maybe padded."

"What are you up to?"

"It's a surprise."

8 - * - * - 8

Phil DeVille didn't think he had ever been more impressed with a surprise in his life.

It turned out that being involved with a sports journalist had its perks, and one of those was, apparently, that she could call in favours from further up the foodchain, and get them the best seats in the house for the last Kings-Flames game of the season. He found himself seated in the Staples Centre, wearing his brand-new Flames jersey, screaming his lungs out while Lor simply watched on, bemused, and gave an occasional cheer when either team scored (as a So Cal native, she was honour-bound to support the Kings, but as she was sharing a bed with Phil, it would be a good thing for her personally if the Flames won).

"Thank you," he told her over the roaring boos of the crowd as the Flames scored again to put the result beyond doubt. "This was awesome."

She smiled. "I'm glad. It's not over yet, though."

"It's not?" Phil asked, as the siren went.

"No. You'll have to wait for a little bit, though." She kissed him on the cheek. "Wait here."

It was nearly twenty minutes before Lor returned, wearing a Kings jersey and carrying a large bag. Phil was glad for the distraction, as he had found himself oddly hypnotised by the sight of the zamboni clearing the ice, as if it was a rolling stream or a crackling fire.

"Think again," he said. "I know we've done some kinky things in our time -"

"Don't finish that thought," she said, before handing him the bag. "This is for you."

He took it from her, surprised. "You're setting a really high standard for all future birthdays, you realise. This makes three presents already."

"Well, keep in mind I'm expecting similar treatment."

He smiled at that. "I'm not taking you to a football game."

"Not even if I ask real nice?" she teased, before motioning toward the bag. "Come on, come on."

He reached into the bag and instantly recognised the objects inside. "Not ballet slippers again?"

She didn't even dignify that one with a response.

8 - * - * - 8

Lor was gifted at many sports, but ice skating was not necessarily one of them. But as she and Phil zoomed around the ice, played one-on-one hockey against each other, and mostly strived just to not fall over, she couldn't remember enjoying a winter sport more.

The look on Phil's face made it all worth it, anyway.

She eventually decided to take a break from all the fun and games, collapsing in a heap on the home team's bench and simply watching as Phil led an imaginary Calgary team to an imaginary Stanley cup against imaginary opponents.

He eventually ceased accepting the accolades of his imaginary fans and skated over to lean against the barrier at the bench. "I cannot thank you enough for this."

She shrugged. "It was nothing," she assured him.

He shook his head. "No, it was really something. I had a great time. I always do with you."

"That's why I'm your girlfriend."

He reached out to her, over the waist-high fence, and she took his hands, allowing him to pull her to her feet and she skidded along the ground on her skates. "You're not my girlfriend," he said.

Lor's jaw dropped. "Pardon?"

"Okay, I didn't mean that how it sounded, obviously," he said. "Look, ever since Tino and Tish's wedding, I can't help but feel like there's been this..._thing_ hanging between us. That we don't want to confront. Everyone keeps saying to me, _I can't see you two getting married_. And they're right, kind of."

"Are they?" Lor asked. She was really not sure where this was going, or where she wanted it to be going.

"They are. Can you see us having ninety people come to dinner at a massive, gold plated hall? Or, indeed, sit around us in a forest with a yak? Or to a lavish reception at the North City Rest?"

"No, I really can't," Lor agreed.

"But that's the thing," Phil said. "I can't see us getting married like that, either. That's just not us. But do you know what _is _us?"

She shook her head. "No, what?"

"Lor, I want to be with you for the rest of my life. We're not the kind to have a big fancy wedding. But I _really_ want to be married to you."

She felt her eyes water and blinked them rapidly. "You do?"

"I want to be with you. For the rest of my life. How we get there doesn't matter, but I want to _be_ there. With you. So..."

"So?" she asked.

"So...will you marry me?"

Lor felt her knees wobble and she clung to the barrier in front of her to keep her feet. She was _not_ going to ruin this moment by falling over.

"Yes," she said. "Oh god yes."

Phil laughed, in a completely instinctive reaction. He wasn't entirely sure it was entirely appropriate, but he didn't care. He was so full of happiness that it exploded out of him in sound. He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a jewellery box. "I got this. I didn't think you'd like a ring, and - if you don't like it, you don't have to wear it. I just wanted to get something to commemorate this. Something...not something that mst people would have, but something that was...us. Riding the ragged edge of tradition."

He prised the box open, revealing an opal necklace. It was simple, unobtrusive and elegant, the ancient fire caught in the gemstone glinting under the lights of the arena.

It was not a diamond ring, which would have left her self-concious, or her birthstone, which would have bordered on the cliche. But it was something eternal and timeless and it was something that completely captured them as a couple, and she loved it.

"Help me with it?" she asked, turning around so he could clasp it behind her neck, pulling her hair clear of it. She turned back to face him. "How do I look?"

He smiled. "Beautiful. Engaged."

"Engaged."

"To be married," he elaborated.

"Married," she said, rolling the word around on her tongue. Phil was no longer her boyfriend. He was her fiance. Soon to be her husband.

Weddings, she decided, were overrated. She couldn't wait to be married.

8 - * - * - 8

**Episode 6: Blackout will be out next week. On time. Seriously. Reviews, in the meantime, are appreciated.**


	6. Blackout

Reggie dropped into a seat at the Java Lava's counter. "Double shot. Straight up."

Phil raised an eyebrow. "You know that order here is only going to get you espresso, yes?"

"I know. At this point, I'll take any mind altering substance you can sling me. Caffeine will do."

Phil grinned and started racking up the espresso machine. "You should try a short black slammer."

Reggie brushed her fingers through her hair. "What's that?"

"One second."

She watched as Phil went to work, lining up her short black, another of the same, and two flat whites, before grabbing a bar of chocolate, from which he broke off two squares, and two sachets of sugar. Finally, he laid them all out on the counter between them.

"Alright, so when we were younger we needed to develop a way of getting a big time caffeine hit in a hurry. You know how it is - exams, holiday slide shows, anything that you need to fake being awake for," Phil explained. "So the idea is that you sprinkle the sugar on the back of your hand. You lick the sugar, shoot the espresso, bite the chocolate, and chase it with the flat white."

Reggie stared at him in horror. "And then?"

"And then you're good to go for a couple of days," Phil said, grabbing one of the sugar sachets and sprinkling its contents over the back of his hand. "You up for it?"

Reggie grinned. "When have you ever known me to back away from a challenge?"

**From Here On  
Episode 1.6 - **_**Blackout  
**_**by Acepilot & Lord Malachite**

**Phil DeVille - Lor McQuarrie - Dil Pickles - Reggie Rocket**

It was getting reasonably late in the afternoon when Lor DeVille stumbled through the doorway of the Java Lava. She didn't exactly look dejected, but there was a clear slump about her movements.

Her husband, on the other hand, was still flying pretty high from his earlier caffeine overdose, and swept over to her as if walking on air. He planted a kiss straight on her lips. "It's my wife! How are you? Are you good? Would you like a coffee? How goes the job hunt?"

Lor simply stared at him. "Who did slammers with you?"

"Reggie."

Lor groaned. "Great. So she'll be off her tree too."

"Nah, she's an amateur. She's already crashed," Phil said, jerking a thumb toward the backroom.

Lor crossed over and cracked open the back door just enough to see her friend and former colleague napping with her head on the desk.

"I thought she could handle it," Phil said. "Clearly, I thought wrong. She'll be up and about pretty soon though."

"And you?"

"It's starting to wear off," he admitted. "Now, come on. Seriously. How were the interviews today? Any nibbles?"

"None to speak of," she told him. "It was all the usual. Smile in the right places, laugh at the right jokes, try and find the right thing to say, and what do you get for it? 'We'll see what direction we end up going in. We'll let you know later.' All very nicely phrased ways of saying, 'forget it'."

"You'll find something."

"The Bahia Bay Herald are looking for people," she said.

"I thought you didn't want to go there," Phil pointed out.

"I don't," she said, hanging her head. "It would just be...such a step backward."

"Then why bring it up?"

"Because...well, you know, the money thing - "

"Lor, for the tenth time, we will be _fine_. The Java Lava is doing well. I'm making money. I've even sold a few paintings. If you're out of work for a while longer - " He sighed. "Look, I would rather you were doing something that would make you happy than just going back to looking for a wage."

She peered at him closely. "You'll tell me, though, if we need the money?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Really."

"You promise?"

Phil groaned. "Lor -"

"Alright, I believe you."

He kissed her on the forhead. "Thank you. You want a coffee?"

"Sure," she said, wandering back over to the seats in front of the counter. "You want me to make them?"

"No, that's alright," he said, following behind and flicking the espresso machine back to life.

"Really. I can."

Phil opted not to offer an opinion on that. "You're really not allowed to do that unless you work here, Lor."

"Oh," Lor said, sitting down heavily on one of the barstools. "Maybe you could give me a job."

Alarm bells went off in Phil's mind. Not many things screamed _bad idea_ quite as loudly as this one. "Lor -"

"I mean, I could do it. You're always moaning about how you need more staff."

Very aware of the fine line he was walking, Phil merely made a 'hnn' noise somewhere in the back of his throat.

"And I know the place really well."

Phil couldn't help it: that one he actually snorted at.

Lor glared at him. "You don't think I could do this job?"

Phil shook his head. "No, I'm sure you could." _I don't want you to_. "But I really don't have any jobs going."

"Not even for your wife?"

Phil offered a toothy grin. "Sorry. Labour laws."

She rolled her eyes.

8 - * - * - 8

Dil was not having the best of days when he arrived at the Java Lava. Working as an inventor for his Dad was fun, and challenging - but the downside of any challenging job was that it had a tendency to get very frustrating very quickly. Today had been one of _those_ days, when nothing worked, when all the good ideas were taken, and where all the equipment decided to fail.

He pushed open the door to the Java Lava and discovered he was not alone in having had a less-than-stellar day.

Reggie was seated in the corner nearest the window tapping away on her laptop, looking more lethargic than Dil had ever seen her. Phil was in another corner with an easel, painting something angled away from the entrance. Arnold appeared to be sweeping the floor but Dil knew someone who was just wasting time when he saw them. And Lor was behind the counter with an increasingly large collection of cups of espresso to her right. The only sound on offer, other than the occasional curse from Lor, was a very quiet, quite mellow piece of music that Dil couldn't immediately identify, which seemed to drape itself across the cafe and encourage the feeling of a lazy afternoon.

"Wow," he said, "the party has arrived."

Only Arnold turned to greet him. "Good afternoon, sir. Would you like a table?"

Dil raised an eyebrow. "What's that about?"

Arnold shrugged. "I'm trying to prove what an excellent employee I am, in case Phil decides to replace me."

Dil turned to the man behind the easel. "Why are you replacing Arnold?"

"I'm not, don't worry," Phil said, poking hard at the canvas with his brush.

"I've got competition now," Arnold told him, pointing to the counter.

Where Lor cursed as she slammed down another cup of coffee, a flat white by the look of it, albeit with far too much foam.

"Burnt the milk again?" Reggie asked, without looking up.

"Only a little," Lor said through gritted teeth.

Phil let out a brief laugh, and ducked as sugar sachets were flung in his direction.

Dil put his briefcase down on some of the little remaining counterspace and sighed. He eyed the cups of coffee warily. "Are any of these drinkable?"

Lor pointed to a batch of cappucinos in take-away cups. "Those were pretty good."

Dil decided to brave it - he needed the caffienation. "So, how was everyone's day?"

He got a chorus of "Eh" in response, and sipped gingerly at the cappucino. It wasn't entirely terrible.

"Being unemployed sucks," Reggie announced from the corner. "Newspapers are dying."

"Write online," Dil suggested.

"Everyone and their dog writes online. It pays _nothing_."

"Like, literally nothing?"

"Unless you're insanely popular, then pretty close to. Besides, it's all a bit...intangible, for me. I want a real job which puts out real product that I can really point to and say, 'Look, I'm doing something with my life'."

"And what are you doing with your life?"

"At the moment, nothing."

"This is cyclic thinking," Arnold pointed out.

"Unemployment is killing my brain cells," Reggie told him.

"Didn't you used to...oh, let's say, play basketball?" Lor asked from the counter. "Give that a go."

"That was years ago, Lor," Reggie said.

"Only six years ago, Reg," Lor said. "You're all of 29. Basketball players these days are playing older and older."

"Drop it, Lor," Reggie suggested.

"I'm just saying - "

"Drop it, Lor."

Lor, slightly taken aback, did indeed drop it. An awkward silence settled upon the room, into which Phil painted, Arnold swept, Lor tapped her fingers against the countertop and Reggie glared at her computer.

Dil sighed. Evidently no-one was going to just ask him what had him in a foul mood, so he'd have to do it himself. "So, does anyone want to know what happened to _me_ today?"

Arnold turned to him with a bright, slightly overdramatic grin. "Gee, Dil, you look down this evening. What exactly happened to _you_ today?"

"I spent the whole day trying to fix a problem with my latest toy," he said, thankful for the attention. Standing around with all the mopey people was getting old. "I need to use a smaller battery for the size but it's not putting out the right amount of power. So I was trying to see how much charge I could load onto an A23 cell before it - "

He realised he was quickly losing his audience.

"I'm trying to make a better battery," he summarised.

"And it's not working out for you?" Arnold asked.

"No," Dil said, dropping himself down at the nearest table. "I blew up seven batteries and two chargers. In the end I just gave up and came here."

Dil had a momentary flash in his mind that he'd forgotten to do something, something quite important, but couldn't work out for the life of him what it was. That usually meant an epiphany was coming his way, and tomorrow he'd discover something vital to the charging of batteries that would change the world. He would just let it arrive in its own good time.

The Java Lava mulled in its silence for a moment. Arnold gave up any pretence of sweeping and bounced the broomstick between his arms in rough time with the music. Phil's painting favoured long and sweeping strokes, and Lor finally ran out of coffee cups and simply stared at her massive collection of drinks in disappointment.

Dil, lacking anything better to do, sat down and tried to grapple with what it was he'd forgotten. Something about charging batteries. Charging. The charger.

Had he turned it off?

There was a sudden, alarming _whirr_ that seemed to echo for streets all around them, and the lights and music of the Java Lava went off. The dim twilight outside was only augmented by the glow of Reggie's laptop.

Dil groaned. His dad would be proud of him, though. Causing blackouts across North City was practically a Pickles' family tradition.

8 - * - * - 8

"I thought you said you had candles," Reggie said.

"I do, somewhere," Phil told her, "so if you could kindly angle the screen more to the left I'll see if I can find them."

The stockroom of the Java Lava was pitch black, and Phil had been completely unable to locate the torch he usually kept under the counter, so Reggie's computer had been drafted into service to function as an oversized but undereffective flashlight.

"Well, hurry it up, my arms are getting tired," Reggie said.

"They are not," Phil muttered.

"Well, maybe not, but if I was in worse shape they would be. You wouldn't get Dil to hold this for so long."

Phil turned to stare at her for a second. "That didn't even make sense."

"Shut up and find the candles," she demanded.

He did turn back to his task, but decided not to let the subject go. "What is up with you, anyway? You've been out of sorts all day. This joblessness thing cannot have suddenly _just_ gotten to you."

"Maybe it has," she told him. "Why not?"

"Because I know you better than that," he told her. "You've been frustrated for weeks because you couldn't find a job anywhere. Today you're annoyed about something else - something related." He turned again. "Did you find a job?"

"Did you find the candles?"

Phil rolled his eyes and pulled another box out of the stack. The sticky tape holding the bottom of it together promptly failed, and the floor was hit by a deluge of candles.

"Yes."

8 - * - * - 8

Phil set aside his painting and decided to start a new one, to take advantage of the drastically reduced light. The Java Lava was ablaze with candles but it wasn't quite the same. He had some options for a life study - Arnold, Lor and Reggie playing poker, the espresso machine by candlelight, or Dil sitting with a pad and pencil trying to nut out a problem that continued to elude him - but he opted, instead, to simply paint one of the candles, trying to capture the moving flame, the beauty of the melting wax, the warm glow it evoked.

He kind of would have liked more light to be doing it by.

His concentration on the candle was finally interrupted by a huff from Lor, and a declaration of "Alright, I fold."

Arnold simply grinned and pulled the chips into his pile.

Reggie shook her head. "Your face is so straight I could put a level on it. How do you _do_ that?"

"Countless years of deadpan humour," Arnold told her.

"I've been around Phil for years and _I _can't bluff," Lor grumbled. "Your deal, Reg."

Reggie gathered in the cards. "We play much longer and I'm going to be broke."

"You must _really_ need work then," Phil interjected.

"You guys could come and work for me," Dil suggested, violently crossing something out on his pad and replacing it with something else.

"Doing what?" Reggie asked, cautiously.

Dil shrugged. "I don't know yet. But I'm sure I could find a capacity in which I could use you."

"You say any variation on 'bikini model' and I'll throw something at you," Reggie said.

"It's dark," Phil pointed out, "you'd probably miss."

"I can hit baskets in midnight basketball," Reggie said, "I could certainly hit Dil in the side of the head with a coaster or something."

"If you're still that good," Lor said, "then why aren't you looking for a spot in a pro team again?"

"Lor, drop it."

"No, that only works once a night," Lor said. "Come on, Reggie. You were meant to be going into journalism to make money until your knee healed. But hey - your knee is healed. You're all better. I know it's been a long time - "

"No, you know what, Lor? It's been six years. Six years since I was on a pro court. Six years since I played any higher level of basketball than a scrimmage at the North City Courts. Six years since anyone remembered what my name was. I'm not a pro basketballer. I'm retired. I'm not going back to that."

Reggie stood up sharply from the table, her chair screeching againbs thte floor as she shoved it out behind her. She stormed across the room and slammed the supply room door open, stomping through it and disappearing into the dark.

"My candle went out," Phil said.

8 - * - * - 8

Dil pushed the door to the stock room open, candle holder in his hand. "Reggie? You out here?"

There was no response at first, just a quiet sound of breathing that confirmed he wasn't alone. "Reggie, if that's _not _you, then please indicate so I can run. And call the police."

There was a sigh from the dark. "Yeah, it's me," Reggie said. "I'm over by the beans."

Dil picked his way out over to the corner where the coffee beans were stacked in bags, and eventually the shadows coalesced into the shape of Reggie Rocket, leaning against the hessian sacks and looking very sorry for herself. He sat what he decided was probably a reasonably safe distance away and placed the candle on the floor between them.

For a few minutes, neither of them spoke, simply sharing a silent moment between friends. Finally, Reggie threw her head back and groaned.

"Alright, alright. Enough. I cave."

Dil smirked, but he could barely be seen in the candlelight and therefore the effect was somewhat lost.

"We're worried about you, Reggie," Dil told her. "Really. If there's something you don't want to tell us...then, well...actually, we'd rather you told us. But seriously. We're your friends. We want you to be happy."

She sighed. "You guys wouldn't understand."

"Try us."

Dil and Reggie locked eyes across the candlelight.

"I kind of love you sometimes, Dil."

"It's what I'm here for," he told her, bouncing to his feet. He held out a hand, which she took, allowing him to help her to her feet. She followed him back out into the cafe proper, where Arnold and Lor were playing Snap, and Phil was still trying to get his painting of a candle right. All three of them were trying very, very hard to look like they were not waiting on tenterhooks to find out what on earth was going on with their friend.

"I've been offered a job," Reggie said, without preamble.

"Bikini model with Pickles Enterprises?" Phil asked, and ducked a particularly-accurately thrown poker chip.

"The Chicago Sky want me back," Reggie carried on as if she hadn't been interrupted. "They're looking to rebuild and they want me to come back and play centre again."

Dil clapped her on the back. "That's great! I mean...it's a long way away, but...seriously, Reggie. It's basketball. It's doing it for a living again. It's what you've wanted for ages."

There was silence.

"Isn't it?" Phil asked.

Reggie shook her head. "I knew you guys wouldn't get it."

"Then explain it to us," Arnold suggested.

Lor hadn't said anything, and Reggie turned to look at her. "Don't you have anything to say on the subject?"

Lor shrugged. "Not really. Come on, tell us why you aren't going to go to Chicago and live your dream. Albeit a few years late."

"You know why."

"No, I don't," Lor said. "I mean, with anyone else, I'd say you were afraid. But you're not afraid. You're Reggie Rocket. You can do anything."

"You're confusing me with Kim Possible," Reggie told her. "I'm Reggie Rocket. And I failed."

"You were unlucky - "

"I failed!" Reggie shouted. "I had my chance at the big time, I really did. And what happened? My body wasn't up to it. I failed. My knee gave out, and I couldn't play for a year, and there was a nice, cushy job back here, much closer to home...and I took it. I ran away from it because I failed and I was scared. I had a half-dozen opportunities to try and break my way back into the big time and I didn't take any of them because I was always able to say that I was happy where I was, I was doing something I enjoyed, I didn't want a change. But now, I'm doing nothing, I'm not happy - and so the reason that I'm not going and doing this is because I'm scared, because I've already failed at this once, and if I fail again, then that means...that means that maybe I was never meant to do it. Maybe I was always meant to be a journalist or whatever. Maybe I was never meant to be a basketballer. Maybe I was only ever meant to watch. And if that turns out to be true, then...then what am I going to do?"

There was stunned silence at her outburst, and no-one seemed willing to break it. Scanning across the stunned faces of her friends, she finally couldn't take it any more, and turned away from them, storming out of the Java Lava and into the street. She made it several doors down before realising the town was still blacked out, and it was very, very dark out.

Before the unsettling nature of _that_ fact could truly set in however, she was suddenly accosted from behind by someone wrapping their arms around her and clinging to her back. She was a few heartbeats away from a full blown panic when a familiar voice muttered in her ear, "You're an _idiot_, Reggie."

8 - * - * - 8

They lit the candle that Lor had brought out with her and sat at a bus stop.

"I never tried hard enough, you know," Lor said. "I mean, I spent the whole of my school life playing sports and being really good at it, but the idea of training all the time, really doing it for a living...it was never for me."

"It's not easy," Reggie agreed.

"Yeah, but you make it look easy," Lor said. "I mean, six years since you last played in the WNBA and you're a month, if that, away from compteitive fitness. You've stayed that way because you always knew this day would come. And it should. You're scared of failing, Reggie, I get it. But won't it be worse if you don't try? If you never actually give it a shot? I mean, if your knee gives out on you again it won't be because you didn't try hard enough, it'll be because you've got a lousy knee. You know that, right?"

"What if it's not my knee?" Reggie asked. "What if I'm just not good enough?"

Lor laughed. "I refuse to believe it. But even if it is, then so what? You'll have made a comeback into the WNBA. Do you know how few people can do that? Hell, how few people manage to make it that far at all, much less fall from it and rise again? They wouldn't want you back if they didn't think you were what they needed, Reggie."

"I know," she said, slowly, deliberately. "I just - "

"What you just need to do," Lor said, before Reggie could find another reason to stop herself, "is go to Chicago, and play, and enjoy every second of it. If it turns out that you can't, then you can't. It won't happen, trust me. But even if...then there are worse things in the world. You'll come back to journalism a little older and a little wiser and with a few new stories to tell. And you'll never forgive yourself if you don't."

Reggie stared at her friend in the dim light of the candle and the half-moon before wrapping her arms around her. "I might need you to come to Chicago to kick my ass into shape when I'm feeling sorry for myself."

"Don't you have a coach to do that?"

8 - * - * - 8

When the lights finally came back on at the Java Lava, Arnold cleaned up the coffee beans that had been knocked over in the dark, Phil contemplated his painting, Dil threw a twentieth sketched diagram on the floor, and Lor and Reggie played a particularly savage game of Blackjack.

"We should probably go home, huh?" Arnold said, stretching. "It's got to be getting close to midnight."

Phil, busily tipping candle wax on his artwork to give it an authentic look, shrugged. "Probably."

Lor stared at her collection of failed experiments in the art of coffee making and groaned. "Maybe I could be a waitress," she said, tipping several down the sink.

"We don't have those," Phil pointed out, stacking cups in the dishwasher.

"You could make an exception," Lor suggested.

"Lor - "

"I'll stop, I'll stop," she said. "I know us working together is probably not the best idea."

"Really?" Phil asked, slightly surprised.

"Well, we'd see each other at home. Then we'd see each other at work. I love you dearly, Phillip DeVille, but too much of you is more than enough."

"Thanks, I think."

She kissed him on the cheek. "It was meant in a good way."

"I'm sure."

"Remind me not to make friends with married people in Chicago," Reggie said, ostensibly to Arnold. "Too much sweetness is bad for my health."

Phil rolled his eyes. "It's really not going to be the same without you," he told her.

"Yeah," Dil said. "Who'll lose to me at Trivial Pursuit now?"

"Is that what you guys were doing on our wedding night?" Lor asked.

Reggie groaned. "You guys are just sentimental wusses," she said, pushing the door open and leading the band of friends out into the street. "People come, people go, we all adjust. The sun rises, the sun sets, life goes on, the wheels on the bus go round and round."

Phil locked the door behind them with a _click_ as his wife made a similar sound with her tongue.

"_The wheels on the bus go round and round?_" Arnold said, rolling his tongue as if testing how the words felt in his mouth.

"And you call yourself a writer?" Phil scoffed.

Reggie shrugged. "Nah," she said, wrapping an arm around Lor's shoulder and giving a squeeze. "I'm a basketballer."

8 - * - * - 8

**Alright, thank you for reading! We'll be taking a break here for the moment but we'll be back with more in the new year. Feedback is massively appreciated. Thanks to everyone who has supported us and read the stories so far.**

**When we come back, Lil and Arnold will both join the cast on a full time basis, and there'll be one more character added to round out the group as well. We think you'll enjoy where the series goes from here, it's going to be a little less 'sitcom' and explore the characters a bit more. So be sure to keep an eye out. Later days!**


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